Dozens of established carmakers, technology companies, and startups are working furiously on autonomous vehicles. But if you look at the cars that are actually driving themselves on roads today, just two models are miles ahead: the Lexus RX450 and the Ford Fusion, with its sibling, the Lincoln MKZ.
Public records sourced from the California Department of Motor Vehicles show the Ford Fusion and the Lexus RX450h make up more than 80 percent of self-driving cars that are not vehicles being tested by their own manufacturers. Nationwide, the figures are harder to come by. Going by publicly available information, the Fusion and the RX450h roughly account for more than a third of all autonomous test cars in the United States.
Leading the Lexus camp is Google, with the largest total of self-driving cars: 24 RX450hs and 34 of its own prototypes. Zoox, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to make a fully autonomous vehicle for ride sharing, also uses a Lexus crossover for testing.
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?There are no other OEMs that are currently so open to work through third parties.?
? Bobby Hambrick, CEO, AutonomouStuff

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It comes as no surprise that Ford itself uses a pair of Fusions for experimenting with autonomous driving in the Golden State, but so does Udacity, an online educational organization that has just launched a nine-month “nanodegree” program to train engineers in self-driving technology. Two other Silicon Valley startups, Faraday Future and Drive.ai, rely on the Lincoln ...