Google Breaks Through in Driverless Car Testing

The self-driving car development division - the Waymo project under Alphabet Inc (Google's parent company) has just announced the next step of testing. Accordingly, Google-branded cars will be completely self-driving without human assistance.

Google's driverless car has completed 5.6 million km of testing

In the previous round of testing, with more than 5.6 million kilometers of real-world road running, self-driving cars still needed human support. With the Google-branded car fully driving without human support, it is a new breakthrough for the project.

After more than 5.6 million kilometers of testing, this project far exceeds the distance that competitors developing self-driving cars such as Ford or Uber have tested.

However, the two companies mentioned above have superior car manufacturing potential and user networks - areas that Waymo has not yet developed.

Opening a new experiment, the project team used self-driving cars for taxi service in Phoenix (Arizona, USA).

In the next crucial step of testing, self-driving cars will be driven without human supervision.

John Krafcik (former Ford senior manager) is now the project director, said that according to the plan, the on-demand self-driving car service will be Waymo's first commercial operation.

During an appearance at a summit on driverless car technology in Lisbon, Portugal, John debated how self-driving vehicles could replace personal cars - a topic that poses a threat to the auto manufacturing industry.

"Clearly the potential of carpooling is huge, and Waymo's pioneering autonomous vehicle technology is providing customers with a comprehensive driverless car service experience," John Krafcik confidently declared.

Google Car on a test run - Photo Digital Trends

Google started its driverless car project in 2008. By 2015, users could experience test driving on the first cars of Waymo's project.

The driverless car can reach a maximum speed of 40km/h. The car is also equipped with additional devices such as radar, a sensor camera and a control camera, and is controlled via smartphone.

According to TTO/Carmagazine