Google’s parent company Alphabet has its own self-driving division called Waymo. It has been testing its self-driving cars on public roads for quite some time and the division has now passed a major milestone. It has been confirmed that Waymo’s self-driving cars have driven more than 8 million miles on public roads. This equals to almost 25,000 miles being driven every single day which is considerably more than what its rivals have been able to achieve.
Waymo CEO John Krafcik confirmed earlier this week that the company’s self-driving cars have driven more than 8 million miles on public roads ever since Waymo put these vehicles on the road.
Some of you may remember that Waymo had announced in November last year that its cars had driven 4 million miles on public roads. Waymo has been able to double that number in less than a year, in eight months to be precise.
Waymo’s self-driving fleet currently includes over 600 Chrysler Pacifica minivan that are capable of driving themselves on public roads. However, in light of prevailing regulations, a human safety driver is behind the wheel at all times to take over should something go wrong.
Krafcik also added that over 5 billion miles have been “driven” in simulation. The self-driving cars encounter situations that they may not come across in real life during these simulations. The data that’s taken from running these simulations, again and again, is then fed into the machine learning software.