The self-driving technology industry is in a strange state right now. A number of companies have been pouring millions of dollars into self-driving technology for years, and many of them have prototype self-driving vehicles that seem to work. Yet I know of only one company--Waymo--that has launched a fully driverless commercial taxi service. And I only know of one company--Nuro--that's running a driverless commercial delivery service on public roads. You'd expect these companies to be capitalizing on their early leads by expanding rapidly, but neither seems to be doing that.

Honda is set to launch a partial self-driving car during in Japan the summer next year. Its Legend sedan will boast a Level-3 autonomy system, which enables the vehicle to pilot itself for extended periods. According to a report, the car will retail for 10 million yen, roughly $91,000, compared to 7.2 million yen for the current standard model. The news was first shared by Nikkei Asian, which discovered Hondo will incorporated the partial self-driving technology into the Legend, Honda's flagship luxury sedan. Because it will be fitted with the technology, the car will be 40 percent more expensive than the standard model.

Almost six months ago (May 28th 2018) I posted the "AI winter is well on its way" post that went viral. The post amassed nearly a quarter million views and got picked up in Bloomberg, Forbes, Politico, Venturebeat, BBC, Datascience Podcast and numerous other smaller media outlets and blogs [1, 2, 3, 4, ...], triggered violent debate on Hacker news and Reddit. I could not have anticipated this post to be so successful and hence I realized I touched on a very sensitive subject. One can agree with my claims or not, but the sheer popularity of the post almost itself serves as a proof that something is going on behind the scenes and people are actually curious and doubtful if there is anything solid behind the AI hype. Since the post made a prediction, that the AI hype is cracking (particularly in the space of autonomous vehicles) and as a result we will have another "AI winter" episode, I decided to periodically go over those claims, see what has changed and bring some new evidence.

Famous or being the first hacker to jailbreak the iPhone at 17, George Hotz is taking on Waymo, Tesla, and Uber in the race to build the first fully operational self-driving car. Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reason.Magaz... Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reason Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. He was also the first to jailbreak the PlayStation 3, allowing users to play with unauthorized software. Now this 28-year-old technical wunderkind is up against Waymo, Tesla, Uber, and most of the auto industry in the race to build the first fully operational autonomous vehicle.

I'm never sure what to expect when I walk up the steps of Comma AIs office (which is actually a house in a San Francisco neighborhood). Its founder and all-around rabble-rouser George Hotz (the iPhone and Playstation hacker more commonly known as geohot) has strong opinions about the automotive industry and how he can fix it. The company's "ghost riding for the masses" tagline won't win over regulators, but Comma AI's longterm goal of running your car's operating system seems doable. But first, it's concentrating on dash cams that tap into your car's data. Comma AI's latest piece of hardware is the EON dash cam developer kit.

George Hotz, aka geohot, is fidgeting in his living room, wearing dark shades and a giant comma on his t-shirt as he shows me his company's latest product, an $88 universal car interface called Panda. Hotz both lives and works in a residential San Francisco neighborhood with a team of 20-somethings who are helping him build Comma.ai, the self-driving car startup Hotz founded to take on Tesla. Panda is the first bit of hardware Hotz will sell since he canceled his self-driving car kit, the Comma One last year. The decision to cancel was made after Hotz received a warning letter from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) mandating regulatory compliance. Instead of fighting regulators, Hotz said he decided to open-source the plans, enabling anyone who wanted to build it for free.

George Hotz is intrigued by artificial intelligence. The man who hacked the iPhone and PlayStation 3 as a kid, has moved on to self driving cars with his company Comma AI because of the autonomous vehicle technology's reliance on machine learning. After an initial hiccup that involved the company cancelling a device that would make cars semi-autonomous (because of a run in with regulators), Comma AI is back The new $88 Panda OBD II dongle, like most universal car interfaces, plugs into your car (1996 or newer) and gathers data. "It's amazing how little information there is about the plethora of sensors in your car. Information should be free," Hotz said.

The notion of cars that drive themselves is one that becomes more and more real with each passing day. Acquisitions seem to be happening left and right, and almost every major auto manufacturer is devoting resources to bring us a self driving car. Companies like Google, Uber, and Tesla are all devoting significant investments to the self driving car with the universal target date of "2020" for commercialization being forecasted by nearly all of these players. Mobileye, about the only pure-play self driving car stock out there, recently announced a partnership with Delphi and a target date of 2019. While all eyes remain fixed on the big names in this game, there are some new entrants to this space that you may never heard of but that are getting closer and closer to making the self driving car a reality.

A self-driving Tesla comes with a hefty price tag, but a college student has given his Honda Civic similar abilities for a fraction of the cost. Brevan Jorgenson has unveiled a device that replaces the rear-view mirror, which controls the brakes, accelerator and steering – and it only cost $700 to build. The DIY device uses the hardware design and software shared online by Comma.ai last year, which had originally planned to upgrade cars with the technology. Brevan Jorgenson, a senior at the University of Nebraska, used the free online hardware designs and software that was shared by Comma.ai The device, called Neo, was set to be sold on Amazon but was canceled when regulators questioned its safety.

Hotz has vocally undermined Mobileye in the past. At Tech Crunch Disrupt, Hotz referred to Mobileye as "jokers" for working "with regulators to lower the safety ratings of cars that do not have a Mobileye chip in them." Hotz told Business Insider that he has shorted Mobileye's stock. Tesla and Mobileye terminated their relationship following a fatal accident while a Tesla was driving in Autopilot. Mobileye said Tesla was "pushing the envelope in terms of safety" following the crash and ensuing break with Tesla. The self-driving car space is becoming increasingly crowded and that could spell trouble for smaller startups like Comma.ai.