Our future will include driverless cars.

At this year's CES, car companies and graphics card manufacturers alike featured the technology that they believe will power the vehicles of tomorrow. I remember each morning of CES as I sipped coffee on the stoop of The Verge's trailer, watching Volkswagen demonstrate its new driverless parking functionality. The demonstration looked silly, but felt like looking at the not-so-distant future — sort of like how the ASIMO demonstration at Disneyland feels both gimmicky and like a prescient warning of our robot overlords.

How soon will we be driving hands-free? Is the country even ready for driverless vehicles? Those questions have stuck with me since the trade show. For this week, I invited The Verge's car expert Chris Ziegler to explain the history of the driverless car and the incremental improvements that have led us to this moment. Strap on your seat belts! It's going to be a very smooth and safe automated ride.