Self-driving car: Google gets a license
Google's self-driving聽聽is now 100% street-legal -- at least in Nevada.
Last summer,聽聽making it the first state聽in the U.S. to allow self-driving聽聽on the roadways. Back in February,聽聽related to those vehicles. According to聽, to pass inspection, autonomous cars need to have logged at least 10,000 miles, and host companies must post a surety bond of at least $1 million. That bond allows companies to have up to five self-driving vehicles in their fleets.
We'd heard that autonomous cars would receive red license plates to set them apart from the pack. Now聽聽that one car -- a聽聽specially tricked out by Google's聽Sebastian Thrun聽-- has received just such a plate from Nevada's Department of Motor Vehicles. (That's it above, with the "AU" marking -- presumably shorthand for "AUTONOMOUS" -- and the coveted number "001".)
There's no word on where Google's car will spend most of its time, though the report indicates that DMV officials spent time assessing the car in environments as diverse as state highways and the crowded Las Vegas strip. Frankly, we'd be surprised if Google didn't take this opportunity to keep the car in high-density areas to show off its cutting-edge technology.
As a reminder, Google has set a goal of traveling 1,000,000 miles in its autonomous vehicles. To date, it's gone about 200,000 of those miles, with just a couple of fender-benders (and at least one of those happened聽).
The Nevada DMV says that this kind of autonomous聽聽is the "car of the future". It's already received license applications from other companies with self-driving cars, and though the state's licenses are currently limited to corporations, the DMV plans to award them to individual owners down the line.
But the question remains:聽?
