Investing in self-driving tech: How to cash in on the trend

Car Car Headlines News

It's becoming increasingly common to see driverless cars on the road. The technology isn't perfect yet, but there are plenty of companies working on getting it there. No One at the Wheel: Driverless Cars and the Road of the Future author Samuel Schwartz and Wedbush Senior Equity Analyst Dan Ives share their thoughts on investing in the autonomous vehicle space.  Schwartz highlights Alphabet's Waymo (GOOGL, GOOG) as being a company in the lead. Schwartz also points to General Motors' Cruise (GM), and Tesla (TSLA). However, Schwartz notes that one of the big problems for the industry is the 'lack of sharing of information and data,' which means 'we don't know enough about how these vehicles are performing.' Schwartz estimates that it could take another 20 years for driverless vehicles to handle dirt roads or mountain roads, given that these vehicles can't yet do everything that one with a driver can.  Ives compares the rise of driverless vehicles to what we're seeing in AI in that there will be 'derivative plays.' Ives makes the case for Uber Technologies (UBER) as a potential play because he believes 'not just one of five, but potentially two of every five Ubers, end of decade, could be self-driving, autonomous.' Ives echoes Schwartz's comments about GM's Cruise unit, sayiing it is a 'significantly undervalues asset' at the automaker.