Autonomous car: Waymo tests his first Jaguar I-Pace on the track

Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous vehicle division, rolls its first Jaguar I-Pace (electric SUVs) ad hoc. In the long run, they should integrate Waymo One, the paid car-sharing service.

© Waymo.

Electric Jaguar vehicles and autonomous, this is the challenge attempted by Waymo, the subsidiary of Alphabet (ex-Google). A little over a year ago (March 2018), Waymo, one of the leaders in autonomous driving, created the event by ordering nearly 20,000 Jaguar I-Pace, the 100% electric SUV elected electric car of 2019, which had just been unveiled to the general public. Last July, Waymo received three I-Paces, the first to walk on American soil and, incidentally, the first real competitors of the Tesla Model X. Note that the company was delivered well before the customers lambda.

These early Jaguars have not undergone immediate transformations. A good reason for this was to test the performance of the vehicle on the local roads in order to better integrate the equipments of the autonomous driving on road and to develop durability tests. According to our colleagues on the site TechCrunch, the observation period is over. As a proof, they noticed a Jaguar I-Pace SUV, an autonomous vehicle version, carrying out life-size tests on public roads around Waymo headquarters in Mountain View, California. The Jaguar was carrying a security driver. Waymo later confirmed that tests had started.

Once all tests are completed, the Jaguar I-Paces are expected to integrate Waymo One from 2020, the first pay car-sharing service initially launched in Phoenix, Arizona. Currently, the fleet is made up of hybrid minivans Chrysler Pacifica.

Today, Waymo autonomous vehicles have traveled more than 16 million kilometers and should reach the 20 million mark. According to the incident report released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), in 2018 Waymo's safety drivers stepped in to take control of the vehicle once every 17,730 km.