GM Ramps Up Testing of Self-Driving Cars, But Still Lags Waymo
01 February 2018 - 1:52PM
Dow Jones News
By Tim Higgins
General Motors Co. reported progress in the consistency of its
autonomous-driving system last year as it sharply increased testing
on the roads of California, though it remained well behind the
self-driving tech unit of Google-parent Alphabet Inc., according to
state records.
GM's Cruise Automation and Alphabet's Waymo logged the most test
miles on California public roads for their autonomous vehicles in
2017, according to annual reports from companies with testing
permits in California that the Department of Motor Vehicles
released on Wednesday.
The reports are rare window into the companies' testing of
automated driving technology that could reshape the automotive
industry. California has for years been the main location for such
tests -- though some companies have expanded trials elsewhere
recently -- and it requires more public disclosure of testing
companies than most other states.
Cruise logged about 132,000 miles of test driving last year in
California in the 2017 reporting period, which ran from December
2016 through last November. That was more than 13 times as many
miles as in the previous year. Waymo logged a far larger 353,000
miles, though that was almost half from the 2016 period as the
company has refocused its fleet of vehicles to Phoenix ahead of
introducing a commercial driverless ride-hailing service this
year.
Tech companies and auto makers, locked in a race to develop
autonomous technology, are spending billions of dollars in
developing the technology, though there remain questions about when
it will be ready for mainstream adoption and whether regulations
and society will be ready.
Cruise reported making headway on reducing the frequency of
times when its autonomous technology is deactivated because of a
failure or because a safety operator took control -- a figure
companies are required to report.
Human operators had to take control 0.797 times for every 1,000
miles driven, compared with 18.51 times in 2016, the records show.
Waymo's so-called disengagement rate improved slightly last year to
0.179 per 1,000 miles from 0.195 in 2016.
Albert Boniske, Cruise director of product integrity, said in a
letter to the state included in Wednesday's disclosure that none of
the disengagements it reported for last year were made "as a result
of a failure of the autonomous technology."
Some analysts question the value of the disengagement reports,
however, in part because California allows companies to interpret
disengagement incidents differently.
"The California disengagement report says almost nothing about
progress, " Eric Paul Dennis, an analyst at the Center for
Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said on Twitter. "It's not
a controlled metric."
Cruise had the greatest number of crashes during testing last
year, with state records showing 21 during the 2017 reporting
period. Waymo had four crashes, the next largest number, followed
by Uber Technologies and Zoox, which each had one.
"Cruise's rapid rate of improvement, in the most complex testing
environments, is why we're confident in our ability to safely
deploy self-driving cars in 2019," a Cruise spokesman said.
While Waymo decreased its testing in California, it doubled the
number of miles traveled overall to 2 million last year and logged
2.7 billion in a simulator.
Waymo said its testing program enables it to gather as much data
as possible to improve its technology. "Disengagements -- when a
test driver takes manual control of a vehicle while it is in
autonomous mode -- are a piece of that data," it said in a blog
post.
Several companies that are developing autonomous-driving
technology, including Tesla Inc. and BMW AG, logged no miles in
California during the 2017 period. A Tesla official wrote to the
state that it does testing on public roads in various locations
globally, and that it gathers data from Tesla customers who test
its autonomous technology in so-called shadow-mode during normal
operations of their Tesla cars.
Write to Tim Higgins at Tim.Higgins@WSJ.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 31, 2018 21:37 ET (02:37 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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