After spending five years developing self-driving technology, and racking up around 700,000 test miles, Google is ready to launch its own fleet of self-driving vehicles this summer.
The fleet of cars, which lack steering wheels, brake pedals, and gas pedals, include extra safety features and have a max speed of 25 miles per hour. The 100 prototype vehicles will be tested by Google “safety drivers” with a pilot program possibly following in the next few years.
“We took a look from the ground up as to what it would be like if we had self-driving cars in the world,” said Google co-founder Sergey Brin, “The prototypes let users ask for a destination address and then drives them to it.”
Over the next 20 years, self-driving vehicles are expected to hold a larger share of the market with some analysts predicting the majority of vehicles will be self-driving by 2050.