After years of development, with updates here and there from major players in the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry, we’re beginning to see some significant momentum building behind self-driving cars.
These vehicles are starting to hit the streets in limited pilot programs that test their ability to navigate real-world driving environments.
Here are the four companies and cities that are competing to implement autonomous vehicles right now:
1. Waymo in Phoenix
Waymo — the independent, automated vehicle company that began as Google’s self-driving car project — has been experimenting in Phoenix for some time now.
Back in 2016, the company began AV testing at a 60,000-square foot testing facility in the suburbs of Phoenix. Waymo has since started testing its vehicles on the streets of cities in the Phoenix metro area — including Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert.
Despite some false starts — Waymo CEO John Krafcik proclaimed, back in 2017, that fully self-driving cars were already here — the company has made significant progress towards realizing the dream of a city moved entirely by autonomous vehicles.
The company launched a semi-public ride-hailing service back in 2018 and started to ramp up its fully autonomous ride-sharing service toward the end of last year. Anyone living in the East Valley area in Phoenix can now hail and ride in a driverless robo-taxi. While the program is limited to the East Valley area in Phoenix, the company hopes to expand its services throughout the country eventually.
2. Various Companies in San Francisco
This city is home to a few different pilot programs, including Aurora, Cruise, Uber, and Zoox.
Since 2017, Cruise has been running Cruise Anywhere, the company’s internal ride-sharing program that allows any of their almost 1,000 employees to ride in a driverless taxi. Zoox and Aurora have both been conducting trials with their AVs on San Francisco streets for the past few years.
After failing to secure a permit for their initial round of AV testing, Uber returned to San Francisco in March 2020.
It’s not clear why San Francisco is such a popular option for automated vehicle companies, but industry observers have a few guesses. San Francisco is home to Silicon Valley, where many of these companies are headquartered — so the decision may be more out of convenience than anything else. The high-tech city culture of San Francisco may also make the municipality more open to being a testbed for experimental vehicles, like autonomous cars.
The city environment itself may also be a draw. In a statement released after the company received the OK to resume AV testing, Uber said, “San Francisco is a great city to gather key learnings for self-driving technology, given its complex and ever-changing environment.”
3. Toyota in the Woven City
While other companies have looked for the perfect city in which experiment with their autonomous vehicles, Toyota has created its own unique solution. If no suitable location is available for testing, build your own.
Announced at CES 2020, the Woven City is an entirely new town located at the base of Japan’s Mount Fuji. The city itself will be 175 acres in size, support 2,000 permanent residents and be built from the ground up to provide the perfect location for researchers, architects, scientists and engineers to test the latest in autonomous vehicle and smart city technology.
The Woven City will make it as easy as possible for researchers to collect information needed to develop and run autonomous vehicles in real-world environments.
4. Apple in Cupertino, California
Compared to other AV companies, Apple has been less out in the open about its self-driving vehicle projects. However, despite the limited publicity, Apple seems to be on pace with its competitors. Apple’s cars were spotted on the road in Cupertino, California, late in 2019.
While it’s not clear right now when Apple plans to have these cars available, current estimates peg the car’s release date between 2023 and 2025.
The Race to Fully Autonomous Cars
Self-driving cars are beginning to roll out in select cities after years of development. Some of the current AV programs are fairly advanced — like Waymo’s self-driving ride-sharing program — and show how far AV tech has come in the past few years. These cities will likely be the first locations where we see widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles before they become available to consumers.