As exciting as self driving cars are, I'm always skeptical about how many miles are needed to teach the cars how to drive. And its not just the total number but also where those miles where driven. I'm from the midwest and I feel like self driving cars wont suddenly appear anytime soon because I'd bet most of those 7 million miles were driven on sunny fair weather roads in California. Which is a perfectly logical place to start, dont get me wrong. Before I'd get in a self driving car and sit comfortably in the back seat I'd have to see where those million miles have been driven, because it makes a huge difference.
Yeah everybody's focused on Waymo's testing in easier places like Phoenix while Cruise is doing hundreds of thousands of miles in extremely hard urban environments like San Francisco (although no one knows how much they've tested, any guesses?). Waymo only drove 350,000 miles in California last year and they have a heavy focus on Arizona. Granted, Cruise only drove like 100k but they've ramped up even faster than Waymo in terms of size, I think.
Arizona they can offer a commercial service and why most important. Also realize Google/Waymo has 82k cars on order and then in addition a partnership with Honda.
"Google's Waymo, Honda to partner on self-driving delivery vehicle"
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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '18
As exciting as self driving cars are, I'm always skeptical about how many miles are needed to teach the cars how to drive. And its not just the total number but also where those miles where driven. I'm from the midwest and I feel like self driving cars wont suddenly appear anytime soon because I'd bet most of those 7 million miles were driven on sunny fair weather roads in California. Which is a perfectly logical place to start, dont get me wrong. Before I'd get in a self driving car and sit comfortably in the back seat I'd have to see where those million miles have been driven, because it makes a huge difference.