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A Google self-driving car goes on a test drive in California. Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car program has logged more than 2 million miles on public road.
Photo:
Associated Press
By
Tim Higgins
Tim Higgins
The Wall Street Journal
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- @timkhiggins
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Updated Oct. 5, 2016 3:24 p.m. ET
Google’s self-driving car program Wednesday marked more than 2 million miles driven on public roads, a significant lap around traditional auto makers’ efforts to develop autonomous vehicles.
Alphabet Inc.
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’s car program had nearly 60 self-driving vehicles on roads in four states as of August, collecting real-world experience as it learns to navigate the complex world of humans.
Google argues the city-driving experience of its fleet is much more valuable than just highway time, providing opportunities to learn how to handle construction zones, bicyclists’ hand gestures and police cars. Google’s cars, loaded with cameras and sensors, are also gathering a greater array of detailed data.
“There are miles and then there are miles,” Dmitri Dolgov, the software lead on Google’s car program, said in an interview. “An even better way to think about it is not just in terms of miles or time, rather it’s the number of interactions that you have with the world and richness and complexity of those interactions.”
It has taken a little more than a year for the program to go from one million to 2 million miles. In that time, the field of autonomous driving has changed dramatically, suggesting a new era for transportation is about to emerge.
In June 2015, when Google announced its one-million-mile threshold, the promise of Tesla Motors Inc.
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’s Autopilot, a semiautonomous feature that can control the car in certain conditions, was still on the horizon. The feature rolled out in October last year, further sparking interest in what was possible in self-driving vehicles.
General Motors Co.
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, the nation’s largest auto maker, acquired Cruise Automation Inc., the developer of self-driving technology, in a deal valued at $1 billion earlier this year. The company also invested $500 million in Lyft Inc., a ride-hailing service that along with Uber Technologies Inc. is changing the notion of car ownership. Other auto makers have announced their own plans for self-driving cars within a few years, including Ford Motor Co.
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, which is targeting 2021.
Last month, Uber began testing its own self-driving cars on the streets of Pittsburgh. Apple Inc.,
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too, is said to be working on its own self-driving car.
“Autonomous vehicle fleets will quickly become widespread and will account for the majority of Lyft rides within 5 years,” Lyft co-founder John Zimmer wrote last month on Medium. “By 2025, private car ownership will all but end in major U.S. cities.”
IHS Markit
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estimates global sales of autonomous vehicles will reach 21 million in 2035, while Boston Consulting Group estimates sales of autonomous features will generate $77 billion that year.
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Google’s autonomous-car project began 7 ½ years ago, and the company still hasn’t said when it might begin giving rides to the public or detailed its business strategy for the technology. Google has taken a vocal role in advocating public policy for self-driving technology and argues full autonomy is a safer path than incremental advances that still require a human to take control.
Google believes it needs to create a car that can handle roads without human hands.
The 2 million miles Google cars have traveled represent 300 years of road experience, Mr. Dolgov said, and that doesn’t include the 3 million miles driven each day in simulators. Google doubled the number of autonomous miles it drives each week to about 25,000 compared with a year ago. It notes the average human driver travels 13,000 miles a year.
Google is accomplishing this with vehicles on the roads in Silicon Valley; metro Phoenix; Austin, Texas; and Kirkland, Wash. In August, Google had 24 Lexus RX450h SUVs converted into self-driving vehicles and 34 prototype cars on public roadways, the company previously said.
During the past year, the car program has been learning the nuance of driving among humans, Mr. Dolgov said. It is during these miles, for example, that the car has learned to assert itself at four-way stops and how to respond to a car pulled over by a police car with a bicycle riding by the scene.
Write to Tim Higgins at Tim.Higgins@wsj.com
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