Whether we'll have completely autonomous or semi-autonomous cars in the future or not, one thing is clear: a lot or research and development will go into the particular application and automotive in general. The more complex the tasks to be solved are, the more processing power is needed, e.g. for sensing and understanding a traffic situation and acting/reacting reasonably. Speed and power consumption will be an issue, there's a need for optical sensors (including infrared, as well as for radiofrequency communication to establish meshes of cars exchanging traffic data.

If there only were a semiconductor solution that could suit all these needs! ;-)