This article is an acquisition of Capital , Capital’s premium digital offering. For you as a stern PLUS subscriber, it is exclusively available here until December 2nd, 2022. After that, it will again only be available to Capital subscribers at www.capital.de/plus

The first car woke Jennifer King up at 2 a.m. with a loud, high-pitched whine. “It sounded like a hovercraft,” she says, and that wasn’t the really scary thing. King lives on a cul-de-sac on the edge of the Presidio, a 3,000-acre park in San Francisco with virtually no through traffic. Outside, she saw a white Jaguar SUV pulling out of her driveway. It had what appeared to be a giant fan on the roof – a laser sensor – and bore the logo of Waymo, Google’s driverless car subsidiary.

Access to all STERN PLUS content and articles from the print magazine

ad-free

Already registered?