Waymo, owned by Google's parent company Alphabet
So how did Waymo become such a success, beating Tesla and Uber who specialize in vehicle autonomy?
Data from the California DMV showed that Waymo has the lowest rate of human intervention among all of the firms testing in the state in the past year. More importantly, Waymo has not experienced any major crashes or accidents, unlike their rival Uber. One of Uber's self-driving vehicles struck and killed a crossing pedestrian in Arizona this past March. As a result, Uber temporarily terminated its self-driving cars and has been banned from testing on any Arizona roads. In addition to this, Waymo revealed that its self-driving cars have reached 8 million miles on public roads and 5 billion miles in simulated miles. The vehicle technology is able to run through various scenarios that that the cars might encounter in real life and practice how to respond to them in the best way possible. The company has said that the simulated 5.0 billion miles is equivalent to 25,000 self-driving cars operating each day.
Waymo recently announced a partnership with Jaguar Land Rover to provide 20,000 electric, self-driving SUVs. Waymo has also ordered more than 80,000 vehicles, specifically Chrysler Pacificas
There are really three main criteria that a driverless service such as Waymo must meet in order to launch successfully: have an operating system, customer relationship system that connects available cars to passengers, and speed to build cars quickly and efficiently. With all of the success that Waymo has been boasting recently, they are well on their way.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm-mZA46SAM&feature=youtu.be
- https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1117846_waymos-self-driving-cars-are-driving-25000-miles-a-day
- https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/alphabet-google-waymo-crushing-competition-may-be-worth-135-billion-2018-5-1024142429
- https://seekingalpha.com/article/4183756-waymo-worth