Waymo has confirmed that it is developing autonomous driving technologies for trucks, opening it up to an entirely new industry.
The self-driving arm of Alphabet announced the plans to Buzzfeed News and said that its experience with self-driving cars is transferrable to trucks.
“Self-driving technology can transport people and things much more safely than we do today and reduce the thousands of trucking-related deaths each year. We’re taking our eight years of experience in building self-driving hardware and software and conducting a technical exploration into how our technology can integrate into a truck,” Waymo said.
In 2016, Waymo’s arch rival Uber completed a delivery of beer in Colorado, shortly after purchasing self-driving truck start-up Otto for $680 million.
Last week, it emerged just how far ahead Waymo is in developing autonomous vehicles than all of its rivals, putting it in the prime position to expand into trucks.
In the year that ended November 30, 2016, Waymo covered 635,867 autonomous miles in California compared to the 9,668 miles completed by General Motors. The Waymo cars also travelled an average of 5,127 miles before a human needed to take control compared to the measly 34 miles achieved by GM’s test vehicles.
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