Waymo Maintains Lead in Self-Driving Car Race

There is a lot of smoke, many mirrors, and a ton of investment dollars in self-driving cars right now. Everyone has a story to tell about their technology or data or approach. But the only hard numbers, required by regulation, come from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which asks that any company driving autonomously report how many miles they’ve driven and how many times a human had to take over for the car’s AI.

Each year, Waymo, the self-driving car unit inside. In California, they drove 352,545 autonomous miles with 63 total disengagements, for a yearly average of 5,595 miles per disengagement. In the company’s best month, November 2017, they did 30,516 miles with a single disengagement. The only surprise in Waymo’s numbers is that their disengagement rate did not decline much from last year’s numbers. They also reported that they’ve been testing far more extensively, racking up 2 million total miles last year in 20 different cities.