Self driving cars are big news these days. Autonomous vehicles now carry some amazing features. This can range from simple detection of pedestrians to handling most of a drive all on its own. But with any field this competitive it’s easy to lose track of the top of the line models. But if you stick to these top five brands you can be sure that you’re seeing the best of the best:

1. Pony.ai

China’s an undeniable force in the modern tech scene. They’ve gone from chasing the state of the art to creating it. So it’s little wonder that they have a pony in the autonomous car race. But don’t be fooled by the fact that pony.ai is a Chinese company. They have worldwide aspirations that are starting to see fruition in California. They currently have permission to run driverless tests in three cities. They’re long past that point in China. Within that country, they’ve actually been able to offer commercial self-driving car rides to the public.

2. Volvo

Volvo has been working on a self-driving car for some time now. In fact, they’re already on their second generation model. Their current state of the art technology is known as SPA2 – or Scalable Product Architecture. The company is also working with tech giant NVIDIA to create an AI capable of 254 trillion operations per second. Moreover, they’re partnering with Uber, and this may well offer direct competition to the other companies hoping to get into the autonomous taxi market.

3. Voyage

This company has been operating in a 40 square mile, 125,000 resident community for some time now. This is a remarkable achievement for any autonomous vehicle system. But it’s made all the more remarkable for the fact that this isn’t just any community – it’s a retirement community. Voyage is working on a very specific market. It’s trying to improve the lives of the elderly by offering autonomous vehicles. They’re doing a remarkable job of it so far. Right now they’re aiming at a demographic that averages at about 70 years old. If successful, the program will help elderly people get to all of the services that exist outside the sphere of a retirement community. The company is still negotiating legal regulations and red tape. But they’re making solid progress toward a laudable goal.

4. Tesla

When people think of self-driving cars there’s a good chance that they’re thinking Tesla. The company might not have been the first to implement some form of self driving technology. However, they were the first to really make an impact on the general public. However, they’re lagging a little behind in the competition these days. At the moment they’re not allowed to test without human drivers. With that said, their self-driving software is capable of some remarkable flexibility as long as there’s still a human behind the wheel.

5. Waymo

Waymo might be better known to some people as the “Google self-driving car project”. The software giant put a solid decade of development into their autonomous vehicles. Now, under the new brand, they’ve advanced far enough to seek permits to begin operating an autonomous taxi service in San Francisco. With over 83,000 logged autonomous miles it’s clear that this company has achieved some amazing results.