Regardless of whether you want to say that driverless cars officially became a reality in 2017, what’s clear is that work on the technology accelerated in 2017. We talked to some residents of the Phoenix area back in October, and they told us that driverless cars (albeit with safety drivers) had become a common sight there. Waymo and Uber had the most cars in the Phoenix area, but a number of other companies were also represented.
Cruise, the self-driving car startup GM acquired in 2016, has been heavily testing its own driverless ride-sharing service in San Francisco (again, with safety drivers), and GM is getting ready to manufacture Cruise’s driverless car design at scale. GM recently saidthat the company was “quarters, not years” from testing fully driverless cars.
We can expect testing activity to accelerate even more in 2018.
More>>