Waymo’s fleet of self-driving cars drive over 40,000 km a day

Alphabet-owned autonomous car company Waymo has announced that its vehicles are driving around 25,000 miles (40,200 km) every day.

Waymo CEO John Krafcik shared the milestone at the National Governors Association conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This is a major achievement for the company. Last November, it had only 6.4 million km under its belt. Since its cars are travelling over 40,000 km per day, Waymo has doubled its total distance in eight short months.

Waymo has self-driven 8 million miles on public roads, now at a rate of 25K miles per day. This real-world experience, plus over 5 billion miles in simulation, is how we’re building the world’s most experienced driver. pic.twitter.com/VkfmLxwi2c

— John Krafcik (@johnkrafcik) July 20, 2018

To add perspective, it took the company from 2009 to November 2017 to reach its first 6.4 million km.

Waymo owns 600 self-driving hybrid Chrysler Pacifica vans driving in 25 cities across the U.S.

In addition to the 12.8 million km driven on public roads, Wyamo has also been testing its software in a self-driving simulation. The company has virtually driven over 8 billion km in the simulation.

Since all of the cars are connected, they share all of the knowledge that every car learns during its testing. Meaning that all of these cars are constantly learning and being updated, even if they’re not experiencing new driving conditions every day.

Waymo has been testing a self-driving taxi service in Phoenix Arizona. According to TechCrunch, the service may launch later in 2018.

Source: TechCrunch