I would argue that autonomous cars have existed in society's consciousness for millennia, so there was never really a tipping point of when they burst into the zeitgeist. read more
Journalists taking rides in self-driving cars has become a public-relations genre unto itself; in the past two years The Verge has ridden in fully or partially autonomous vehicles from Mercedes, Ford, Uber, Comma.ai, and a big rig known as the Freightliner Inspiration. read more