Google’s driverless, or rather, self-driving, computer-controlled cars have reached a literal milestone: The experimental fleet of about a half-dozen cars has logged over 300,000 miles in test drives, Google announced in a blog post on Tuesday.
“We’ve done some testing in Nevada, Florida, Washington D.C., and other areas, but most of our testing has been in California because that’s where our team is based,” a Google spokesperson told TPM in a statement.
Further, Google said on Tuesday that a new type of car will join its fleet of about a dozen modified Toyota Priuses: The Lexus RX450h (pictured at the top).
Not only that, but Google said it will be widening the tests to new terrain and driving situations, including “snow-covered roadways” and “temporary construction signals.” Google will also begin allowing the cars to have just one human monitor riding along, instead of the previous two-people per-car.
Finally, the company said it will allow some employees to begin taking the cars to work.
Specifically, the work commutes using the Google self-driving cars “will take place in the San Francisco Bay Area at this pont,” a company spokesperson told TPM.
Google’s spokesperson told TPM that none of Google’s self-driving cars had ever been involved in an incident with law-enforcement.
In the blog post, Google said that none of its self-driving test vehicles had experienced an accident while under “computer control,” but at least one incident occurred when a Google self-driving car was involved a four-car accident almost a year ago to the day, in August 2011. Google said at the time that the car was being driven manually.
Google declined to specify just when it expected the vehicles to be commercially available, but if a successful test in March involving a legally blind passenger is any indication, the company is well on its way toward changing transportation history.
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