From Jeff Brown, editor, Exponential Tech Investor: Self-driving—or autonomous—cars are coming much faster than you think.

It is one of the most exciting trends that I am tracking right now in technology, as it confers so many benefits. Just to name a few, less driving related deaths, less accidents, less traffic, better fuel economy, improved productivity, less pollution, among many others.



Current forecasts are expecting 10 million cars on the road by 2020 with self-driving features. In fact, you may be surprised to know that they are already on the road today…

Tesla’s (TSLA) cars are designed with an “autopilot” feature that has been in use since last year. Just last month, Tesla announced it had collected 780 million miles of data from its customers’ cars using the autopilot feature.

Better yet, it collects an additional 1 million miles of data every 10 hours. Why is that important? Tesla is able to take that data and improve the performance of the autopilot feature. It gets safer and more efficient by the day.

How soon will fully autonomous vehicles hit the road? Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, announced last month that they would be available in 2018. Within two years. I do not believe he is being aggressive. Tesla has the data to prove it and make it a reality.

  A company that has benefited from the hype around the self-driving trend is Mobileye (MBLY). With a price/earnings ratio of 105, and an enterprise value to sales ratio of 26, I strongly recommend you stay away from this company. You might even consider shorting it…

Aside from its astronomical valuation, its business is being eaten away by two private companies I have been tracking in the space. Quanergy and Velodyne both produce competitive LIDAR products (a technology that uses laser to determine the range to objects around the car) that are more advanced and less costly than Mobileye.

  If you would like to gain exposure to this exciting trend—but would like a more conservative, dividend paying stock—I strongly recommend Nvidia (NVDA). Nvidia was first to market with an autonomous car platform—essentially a super computer—that automotive manufacturers are using to build autonomy into their future car designs.

By combining artificial intelligence and its advanced graphics processing units it has created the most powerful autonomous platform in the market. Nvidia currently pays a dividend of about 1% (the dividend has increased by 25% over the last three years) and the stock has more than doubled in the last 12 months. There is certainly more growth in Nvidia’s future.

In my Exponential Tech Investor newsletter, I also track private companies that are disruptive and working on the leading edge of technology. I am always looking for signs of their potential IPO so I can alert my readers in time to get in on the ground floor when these exciting companies go public.

In fact, just this month (June), one of the private companies from my list had a successful IPO. It is a key technology provider to another exponential growth trend. Click here if you’d like to learn more.