Waymo reaches 5 million self-driven miles

The Waymo odometer rolled over to 5,000,000 in February: our self-driving cars have now covered five million miles on public roads.

That’s a major milestone. Yet what’s really exciting for us is how we’re picking up speed. Our 1st million miles took six years to complete. Our 4th million miles took six months, and this 5th million took just under three months. Today we’re driving as many miles in one day as the average American adult drives in a whole year.

We’re driving more and learning faster, and we’re doing it in increasingly diverse conditions. We’ve now test driven in 25 U.S. cities, gaining experience in different weather conditions and terrains: from the snowy streets of Michigan, to the steep hills of San Francisco, to the desert conditions of Greater Phoenix. And because the lessons we learn from one vehicle can be shared with the entire fleet, every new mile counts even more.

What’s more, that real-world experience is multiplied on our private test track and in simulation. Last year alone our software drove 2.7 billion miles in the virtual world, where we create and test entirely new driving scenarios for extra practice.

Now, take a 360° ride with one of the world’s most experienced drivers

All this experience is what has allowed us to refine our technology and put our fully self-driving cars on public roads. And to help everyone understand how this works, we’ve created an immersive 360° video that we’re launching today: the Waymo 360° experience.

This experience combines footage and real-time data from a trip around Metro Phoenix, Arizona in one of our Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans. It puts you at the very heart of the technology, letting you see through the “eyes” of our state-of-the-art sensors, including LiDAR, radar, and cameras. It brings to life how Waymo sees the world around it, recognizes objects like cars and pedestrians, predicts what those things will do, and then plans a safe path ahead.

The 360-degree format also gives you the chance to take your first ride in a fully self-driving car — putting you right there in the passenger seat, so you can feel what it’s like to be driven by one of the most experienced drivers on the road.

You can view Waymo 360° experience today on desktop, mobile, or with a virtual reality headset including Cardboard and Daydream. To learn how we recreated the authentic experience of our fully self-driving car, learn more about the making-of the video.