Prototype Self-Driving Google Cars to Hit the Streets of Mountain View This Summer [Video]

Google has announced the next step in its autonomous vehicle project. It's prototype self-driving vehicles will hit the streets of Mountain View, California this summer with safety drivers aboard.

Until now, Google has been using modified Lexus RX450h SUVs to test its software.


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We’ve been running the vehicles through rigorous testing at our test facilities, and ensuring our software and sensors work as they’re supposed to on this new vehicle. The new prototypes will drive with the same software that our existing fleet of self-driving Lexus RX450h SUVs uses. That fleet has logged nearly a million autonomous miles on the roads since we started the project, and recently has been self-driving about 10,000 miles a week. So the new prototypes already have lots of experience to draw on—in fact, it’s the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience.

Each prototype’s speed is capped at a neighborhood-friendly 25mph, and during this next phase of our project we’ll have safety drivers aboard with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal that allow them to take over driving if needed. We’re looking forward to learning how the community perceives and interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a fully self-driving vehicle—e.g., where it should stop if it can’t stop at its exact destination due to construction or congestion. In the coming years, we’d like to run small pilot programs with our prototypes to learn what people would like to do with vehicles like this.
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Take a look at the video below for more details. Notably, Apple is now widely rumored to be working on its own self-driving electric car at a secret research lab.

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