Waymo, Ford lead Navigant's Automated Driving Leaderboard

Each year, Navigant Research releases an automated driving leaderboard that includes prominent companies working toward autonomous vehicle technology. Note the difference: "Automated driving" has been commercialized but "self-driving" has not, save for Waymo's operation in greater Phoenix.

Published Monday, this year's list ranks 18 companies based on their tech, "vision," go-to-market strategy, product, partnerships, and more.

• Leaders: Waymo, Ford Autonomous Vehicles, GM's Cruise, and China's Baidu.
• Interesting: Apple and Uber made the cut in 2019 but fell off this year's leaderboard.

This report is controversial...

...because it's always tough on Tesla. Navigant dings Tesla for inconsistent product performance and overpromising on a robotaxi network. CleanTechnica called Navigant's report "nonsense" and said you can't assess proprietary technical systems from arm's length. Tesla probably agrees.

Big picture: It's difficult to measure the progress of each company's robot driver team. All we know for sure is none are all the way there yet.