But the main reason for California’s supremacy in vehicular automation is the presence of a single company. While Google did not invent the self-driving car, it can lay claim to having invented the industry of self-driving cars—purchasing startups, hiring experts, and developing essential mapping and navigation technologies. From the word go, Google has remained one step ahead of the competition. It was the first to test experimental vehicles at scale, the first to move from relatively safe highways to unpredictable city streets, and the first to construct a purpose-built, steering-wheel-free, self-driving prototype. Even today, after the arrival of global carmakers and upstarts like Tesla, Google has around twice as many autonomous vehicles and drivers on California’s roads as everyone else combined.