‘Quality' of Miles Driven Spells Self-Driving ‘Validation,’ Says GM CEO
Test miles of autonomous vehicles plus “quality of the miles" spells “validation,” said General Motors CEO Mary Barra on an earnings call. “To our knowledge, we're the only one testing our autonomous vehicles in downtown San Francisco, which is a…
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pretty dense urban environment with a lot more, I'll say, opportunities to learn from different situations,” said Barra in Q&A Tuesday. “There's quite a bit of work we're doing, even with agencies or groups outside of the company, to put that together.” Under last fall's autonomous-driving report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (see 1609200039), “a big portion of the guidelines they've put out” is for automakers to “demonstrate how you're measuring” self-driving progress and performance, “and then share that” data with industry and government as NHTSA looks at “authorizing, pulling the driver out of the vehicle,” she said. “It's much more involved than just miles traveled.” Lyft's plans to start its own autonomous-driving research won’t affect their self-driving alliance (see 1601040068), Barra said. GM's efforts without Lyft are "quite far along,” she said. GM sees “opportunity to deploy” self-driving cars via ride hailing, she said. "That's in the early stages of sub-deployment."