Alphabet, Tesla Have Early Lead in Crowded Race to Develop Self-Driving Cars

Working in Alphabet’s favor: The company launched its self-driving car project roughly a decade ago with the help of some very smart Stanford and Carnegie Mellon engineers, and since then, its cars have logged more than 1.5 million miles in autonomous mode in California, Texas, Arizona and elsewhere. That’s given Alphabet a big lead in collecting real-world info on how self-driving cars function, one that could grow further as more miles are logged.