The facts about self-driving cars in California

Autonomous cars continue to be tested around the world, but in general there is little data on these tests, except for the case of the state of California that requires companies to publish them. And they are very interesting.

In 2021, the kilometers traveled in California by these autonomous cars have increased and two companies have covered 80% of the total. They are Waymo and Cruise.

Between the two together they drove 3.2 million miles, and Waymo did 2.3 million of them. Waymo is still the company with the most experience, but Cruise's results are just as good.

In the state of California, it requires companies to publish the incidents that occur, and especially the "disengagements" when the car is stopped and without knowing how to react.

In the case of Waymo in 2020 there were 21 disconnections representing 0.033 per 1,000 miles traveled, and in 2021 a total of 292 disconnections representing 0.126 per 1,000 miles traveled, or one problem per 7,200 miles traveled .

According to Waymo, this increase in problems in 2021 was due to the introduction of a new car model, the Jaguar i-Pace.

On the Cruise side they announced 20 disconnections, which represents 0.003 per 1,000 miles, or one problem for every 42,200 miles traveled.

We see that the data are quite good, but not enough to let these cars become dependent on their owners, because they still need someone to control them remotely.

The company that does not have data is Tesla, and that is because it has not provided it. Tesla offers its customers the "Full Self-Driving" package for the modest price of $12,000, when in reality the car is not autonomous, and when it is disconnected the driver must take charge of the car. Not to mention the fatal accidents they have had.

The "advantage" that Tesla has is that there are 60,000 users who use this application in the US, and from all of them the company obtains information that will help it improve its system, and which they don’t share with the authorities.

It is clear to me that fully autonomous cars are still far enough away for the general public, but close enough to offer autonomous taxi services in big cities.

Which is a "problem" for current taxi drivers.