Welcome to my video presentation for today. The article below provides greater details.

For decades, science fiction has whetted our appetites for vehicles that don’t need human drivers and transcend conventional boundaries.

But you can forget George Jetson! The future is approaching faster than most analysts expected. Science fiction is becoming science reality.

Research consultancy IHS Automotive projects that 21 million self-driving cars will be plying the roads worldwide by 2035. IHS also estimates that global autonomous car production will reach 600,000 units by 2025, at which point production will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 43% for the following 10 years.

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) estimates that the autonomous driving systems market is on track to generate $290 billion in revenue by 2035, up from $3 billion in 2015.

The available technology for autonomous cars is starting to match our imaginations and even lawmakers are catching up. So far, legislation has been passed in 29 U.S. states and Washington, DC allowing driverless cars. Soon you’ll be able to text-and-drive to your heart’s content. Below, I pinpoint the best way to profit from this futuristic megatrend.

Fast lane to the future…

A revolution is taking place in our four-wheeled homes. Advances in the speed and intelligence inhabiting ever-shrinking chips have helped fuel this sea change. Tiny chips are replacing metal widgets to replicate their function with improved efficiency, lower weight and greater safety, in conventional and driverless vehicles.

As the chart shows, people in major countries around the world are increasingly embracing autonomous vehicles as safe transportation:

Recent regulatory changes by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration will supply another wave of demand to fuel the geometric growth in this industry.

Now, you might think you’ve already missed out on the big investment gains from self-driving cars, but you need to look beyond the obvious Wall Street story stocks.

The best-known plays on self-driving cars are Alphabet’s (NSDQ: GOOGL) Google, which is developing an autonomous car that’s electric-powered, and electric car maker Tesla (NSDQ: TSLA). These two companies are getting the most headlines in this arena.

Google is in the lead, although several major automakers are jumping into the fray (see chart).

The software guiding Google’s self-driving car is called Google Chauffeur and it processes all of the functions typically handled by human drivers.

Dubbed Waymo, the Google self-driving car doesn’t need the passenger to perform any task except start it and input the destination. You won’t find any steering wheel or pedals, only an emergency brake. The dashboard provides situational awareness that’s created via sensors, cameras and radar.

Waymo currently is developing self-driving taxis, which is a milestone. Ride-sharing apps such as Uber (NYSE: UBER) and Lyft (NSDQ: LYFT) have reconfigured urban life, allowing people to give up their cars and get connected via their smartphones to events happening in real time on the street.

Last week, analysts at Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) published an investor note asserting that Uber is the most transformational development to the smartphone in the past decade. See the following tweet:

Sounds pretty cool. Problem is, Alphabet is a technology behemoth (market cap: $1.8 trillion) engaged in diverse activities. Another ostensible play is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which in 2017 purchased Mobileye for $15.3 billion. Mobileye develops computer vision and machine learning-based sensing solutions. However, acquirer Intel is a vast semiconductor manufacturer (market cap: $158.4 billion) with fingers in many different pies.

With a market cap of $144.4 billion, chipmaker Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) also gets a lot of attention as a self-driving vehicle stock. But Qualcomm isn’t a pure play on the trend, either.

As this chart shows, the stakes are high:

However, when technology breakthroughs come along, I prefer to look for unorthodox plays that offer outsized room for growth. Which brings me to events surrounding Apple (NSDQ: AAPL).

With billions of dollars in free cash flow generated annually, Apple has tremendous amounts of capital to invest in disruptive technology. One salient project is the Apple Car.

Considering Apple’s track record for high quality, if the Cupertino giant is able to develop a self-driving vehicle, it’s a safe bet that it’ll be a game-changing, state-of-the-art product.

But you might be surprised to learn that your greatest opportunity to make money from the Apple Car isn’t buying Apple stock itself.

Make one shockingly simple move today and you’ll lock in your shot at a huge payday when Apple drops its bombshell news about the Apple Car. For details, visit this link.

John Persinos is the editorial director of Investing Daily. You can reach him at: mailbag@investingdaily.com. To subscribe to his video channel, click here.