At CES, Autonomous Cars Are Hot Again

If ever there was a moment for Alphabet to spin off Waymo, it would be now. Optimism about self-driving cars is back, driven (sorry for the pun!) by the very real success Waymo is having with its robotaxi service in markets like San Francisco. Elon Musk’s high-profile presentation last fall about Tesla’s robotaxi plans has surely fueled the new energy. 

The upbeat sentiment was palpable this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, according to my colleague Wayne Ma, who is in Las Vegas (here’s his dispatch today). While self-driving cars have been a feature at CES for many years now, the sector has had its ups and downs—the amount of time it took to get the technology right dashed early hopes. But as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in his Monday keynote at CES, “After so many years, with Waymo and Tesla’s success, it’s very clear [autonomous vehicles] have finally arrived.”