Driverless cars, digital passports, and the new normal

This column comes to you from Los Angeles, where I’m on my annual visit to my son James and his family.

As always, negotiating the Los Angeles International Airport was a challenge. The queues at passport control were the worst I’ve seen, but fortunately, I’d been tipped off about the Mobile Passport Control app.

Before leaving home, you enter your passport details and photo; then, on touchdown, you take a quick selfie. That generates a digital receipt, allowing you to head straight to the designated MPC lane. It cut my wait dramatically, and turned what looked like quite an ordeal into a smooth entry.

Two years ago, I wrote of the thrill of riding in my son’s Tesla, then newly equipped with an early version of self-driving.

Innovation on the road is changing how we travel. Source: Jp Valery / Unsplash

It felt revolutionary at the time, yet the improvements since have been dramatic. It really does think now.

On a high-speed freeway James set it to “hurry” mode, and the car used its long-range cameras to weave effortlessly between the four lanes. It was like riding with a racing car driver.

Later, at a coffee shop in Ventura, the car found a narrow street space beside the café and reversed itself neatly in; I doubt many drivers could have managed it. And the technology doesn’t stop there.

The new Tesla is now equipped with GROK, a powerful generative AI tool built directly into the vehicle.

To show it off, James asked it: “There’s a podcast called Win the Day by James Whittaker. One episode features an interview with James Whittaker and his father, Noel Whittaker. What were the main takeaways from that podcast?”

The response was breathtaking. Within a second it replied that the episode was number 87, then listed the three main points I had discussed.

Last month, Tesla made fully self-driving (FSD) vehicles available in Australia, but it’s called Supervised FSD, as is also the case now in America. The new SFSD is so advanced that only new Teslas equipped with what they call “Hardware 4” will be able to install it. But legally it still requires the driver to be in attendance at all times.

Having fallen for the charms of the fully self-driving car, albeit with a driver on board, we decided to go one step further and catch a Waymo. This is a fully autonomous RoboTaxi. Booking one using the Waymo app on your phone is straightforward enough, but at first it’s a weird experience to see an empty car rock up.

When it does, the process is very simple: all you do is open the door with your app, close the door from the inside, and let the car take you to your planned destination.

It relies on a massive set of technologies that include cameras, radar, and lidar (like radar but using light instead of sound.

The self-driving world is moving fast. Tesla remains the headline act, quietly expanding its RoboTaxi trials in Austin and edging closer to a public launch.

Uber has re-entered the race, teaming with Lucid and Nuro to deploy thousands of autonomous vehicles over the next few years. Volkswagen is joining from Europe, with its ID Buzz AD due in Hamburg in 2026, powered by Mobileye’s L4 sensors.

Meanwhile, Baidu’s Apollo Go is scaling rapidly in China, already handling hundreds of driverless rides daily.

It was fascinating. Oddly, whenever I tell people here of my experiences, the response is something like, “Wasn’t that scary?” or “I don’t think I’d fancy doing that.”

Driverless cars are no longer a futuristic dream. They are here now — on the streets, in fleets, and about to become part of everyday life.

Noel Whittaker, AM, is the author of Wills, death & taxes made simple and numerous other books on personal finance. An international bestselling author, finance and investment expert, radio broadcaster, newspaper columnist and public speaker, Noel Whittaker is one of the world’s foremost authorities on personal finance. Connect via Twitter or email ([email protected]). You can shop his personal finance books here.