INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Waymo By The Numbers6 million: number of miles driven on public roads600: number of minivans in the Waymo fleet20,000: number of Jaguar
I-Paces to be built in the first two years of production'Thousands': number of additional minivans recently purchased from Fiat Chrysler
public roads in addition to the hundreds of millions of miles driven in virtual environments.Take a peek at our photos from Google IO 2018
below!Original article continues belowSelf-driving cars
You've heard of 'em, right One company at the forefront of the movement is Waymo
out on its own just over a year ago, the expertise on which Waymo is building has been around for nearly a decade
Fast-forward to today, and Waymo is leading the self-driving car pack, including in miles driven and rates of disengagement, or when a human
Can it pull it off That remains to be seen.But let's back up
Just what, exactly, is Waymo Is it available where you live Will you be able to hail a Waymo self-driving car when the service launches
Here's a breakdown of everything you need to know about Waymo.What is Waymo and what's it trying to doWaymo was formerly Google's
self-driving car project and officially came into existence in December 2016, when it was announced as a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google's
It does, however, have thousands of self-driving cars in its fleet, equipped with lidar and other sensors that allow for driver-free
future where there are fewer accidents caused by distracted, impaired and generally fallible human drivers, as well as reduced traffic and
greater general ease to getting around
are we talking about hereWhen it started, Waymo made it clear that it wouldn't build its own vehicles for mass production and distribution,
but rather would work with established car makers that would integrate its self-driving tech into their vehicles
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is just such a partner; Waymo's fleet already consisted of 600 Pacifica Hybrid minivans, and Google recently
Specifically, the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid supplied by long-standing partner FCA.While they may look like your average minivan, save for the
lidar rig on top, these minivans have a fully-integrated hardware suite developed by Waymo that allows for complete self-driving
This hardware includes lidar, radar and vision systems that allow for autonomous operation.According to Waymo CEO John Krafcik, Waymo's
sensors provide vehicles with a 360-degree view of the world around them
Lasers (lidar) 'see' objects in 3D and can detect objects up to 300 meters away
What's more, Waymo radar can 'see' underneath and around vehicles, picking up objects a human driver would otherwise miss.In a recent blog
post, Waymo also detailed that its vehicles use machine learning to identify and respond to emergency vehicles or pull off tricky driving
thanks to the partnership with Waymo, 20,000 should be built in the first two years of production
These will be available to use in Waymo's driverless car service when it launches in the US.Where is WaymoWaymo is currently exclusive to
Its primary testing grounds are Mountain View, California; Austin, Texas; Kirkland, Washington; and the metro Phoenix area in Arizona
variety of conditions, such as hills, extreme heat, rain and cold.Fairly lax regulations have turned Arizona into an important and
relatively wide-open testing ground for Waymo
It's here that Waymo is conducting test drives where its vehicles operate without someone in the driver's seat, achieving Level 4
autonomy.In addition to these tests, Waymo also runs an early rider program in the Phoenix area
This is pretty much what it sounds like; select riders can use Waymo cars to travel to places they go regularly, like work and school
with minivans it's already tested, according to Engadget
The service will eventually expand to more US cities, and Waymo's recent order of 'thousands' of minivans from FCA will support this effort
Waymo safeSafety is the number one concern with self-driving cars
Waymo is not without accidents, though the majority of incidents involved a car bumping into a Waymo vehicle from behind or otherwise
crashing into the Waymo car.One accident in September 2017 was caused by a Waymo car, though the human driver had taken over the vehicle and
swerved into the next lane to avoid an object in the road, reports SFGate
The incident raises an interesting question: would the situation have been different had the car stayed in self-driving modePrior to Waymo's
official existence, Google's self-driving cars were involved in a number of accidents
The number reported in 2015 was 12 accidents over the previous six years and more than 1.7 million miles driven, according to the Los
with Google's first at-fault crash in February 2016
sandbags on the side of the road and began to move into the lane when the bus approached
The car stayed in self-driving mode throughout, predicting the bus would stop while it continued its turn
The human driver behind the wheel suffered minor injuries.Footage of the crash, which you can view above, shows the vehicle run the red
Among the self-driving cars on the road that report disengagements, or when a human takes over for self-driving tech, Waymo has the
0.20 per thousand miles to 0.18
Disengagements can happen for a number of reasons, such as someone else driving recklessly or a hardware discrepancy
According to Waymo, "The vast majority of disengagements are not related to safety."According to stats pulled together by The Information's
Amir Efrati, Waymo had the fewest number of disengagements per 1,000 miles driven by self-driving cars
whether Waymo has competition, the answer is simple: yes.Its biggest competition, on a few fronts, is Uber
Waymo and Uber were recently locked in a legal battle over allegations that a former Google employee stole 14,000 files from Waymo detailing
proprietary information, particularly about Waymo's custom lidar circuit board
The employee, Anthony Levandowski, founded an autonomous truck company called Otto that Uber bought
with an attachment showing Uber's lidar system, we may not have faced the biggest lawsuit to hit the nascent self-driving sector
The trial was short-lived, however, as Waymo and Uber announced a settlement on February 9, 2018
While the two are committing to making sure no Waymo trade secrets end up in Uber's self-driving cars, competition between the two is still
fierce.Beyond Uber, there are dozens of companies working on self-driving cars and related technologies, including traditional car makers
Many aim to have their autonomous vehicles on the road in just a few years.Hyundai, for one, wants to have self-driving cars on the road by
2021, while GM is deploying test vehicles in New York City
Ford, VW, Mercedes Benz, Tesla, Nissan, Nvidia, and, yes, even Apple, are just a few of the names currently testing self-driving
We won't be zipping around in these driverless machines tomorrow, but Waymo is well on its way to making self-driving cars an everyday
