Waymo seems to be very confident in their self-driving car technology as they have ordered 62,000 Chrysler Minivans from Fiat Chrysler. This comes at a time when Uber halted their self-driving car efforts and Tesla faced more criticism about their “autopilot” technology.
Waymo is pushing ahead, amidst all of the crashes and accidents which have taken lives, the company believes that what they have is commercially viable and the purchase of these many minivans prove that they are confident. Don’t forget, Waymo has also teamed up with Jaguar Land Rover to build 20,000 Jaguar I-PACE with self-driving technology.
How soon will we see it, probably within the next year or two before more and more Waymo self-driving vehicles are unleashed? There are still many areas which need to be managed, from briefing emergency services on what to do in the event of an accident or emergency as well as insurance coverage and liabilities especially when it comes to self-driving cars. Many governments and local councils will need to agree on certain traffic changes and ruling but overall the future looks pretty bright.
Compared to the rest, folks like Uber, NVidia, Toyota and even Apple are still lacking behind. The closest competitor might be General Motors with their spinoff, Cruise Automation who also have a large fleet of autonomous self-driving cars.
