Waymo’s Self-Driving Cars Have Driven 4 Million Miles

If you’re trying to get an idea of how much data Waymo has managed to collect from its self-driving tests, the short answer is: a lot. In a post on Medium, Waymo has announced a rather impressive milestone, which is that their entire fleet of self-driving cars has managed to rack up a whopping 4 million miles to date.

According to Waymo, they claim that this distance would take the average American driver about 300 years to complete. They add, “With these 4 million miles of experience, we’ve been able to focus on varied and complex driving scenarios. For every situation we encounter on the road, we’re able to amplify and multiply the experience in simulation and on our private test track.”

The company also shares a timeline of how long it took them to hit 4 million miles, where since its inception in 2009 (while they were still under Google’s umbrella), it took the company 6 years before they hit the 1 million milestone. They doubled that a year later, hit 3 million earlier this year in May, and in November 2017, they managed to reach 4 million miles travelled.

The company claims, “With this accelerated learning cycle, we’ve been able to teach our vehicles the advanced driving skills necessary for full autonomy. We’ve been able to unlock an entire geographic area for our fully self-driving cars, and soon members of the public will get to use Waymo’s driverless service to go to work, to school, to the grocery store and more.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Transportation
Tags: Self-Driving Cars, Waymo