On the 2nd Monday of the month we have our monthly Autonomous Vehicles Builders and Beginners event at a local brewery. It is presented by the San Diego Robotics group.
It's DIY and open source for autonomous cars of any size, from tiny 1:28th scale to full-size. Primarily we build cars which us AI/NN based on the Donkey framework( http://docs.donkeycar.com ).
If you want to start a DonkeyCar Project, please bring your kits, and we will have experts who can help you out. If you want to just come out and hang out with the club members, pick up a BOM listing, etc you are more than welcome to join us as well.
Bring your bots, your parts, your curiosity and for fun wear a robot shirt if you can, so that we can identify you easily.
One of our Co-hosts teaches a course at UCSD using our project and will give a great understanding of what's required should you want to join in and build a vehicle: https://guitar.ucsd.edu/maeece148/index.php/Introduction_to_Autonomous_Vehicles