This Chart Shows That GM Is Making A Huge Bet On Self-Driving Cars

Reuters is out with a new report on "The State of Innovation in the Automotive Industry 2015."

It contains a lot of insight, but also this rather surprising nugget:

While Google may get the majority of the headlines related to autonomous driving, it is actually Toyota, GM and Hyundai that are filing the most patents in this area. GM, in particular, has shown an amazing increase in interest with the most documents published in 2013.

That's right, stodgy old GM, a company that's over a century old, is making huge bet on a future that features self-driving cars.

As you can see from the chart, over the past two years GM's patents related to autonomous mobility have left everyone else in the dust.

Also note that after a surge from 2010-2012, Daimler (maker of Mercedes-Benz) saw a major drop-off in patent filings for autonomous driving, one of the few companies to back away, at least for now, from our driverless destiny.