In Self-Driving Race, Waymo Sets Its Own Terms
That is the message Waymo, the autonomous vehicle division of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, tried to send on Monday, when it invited a group of reporters to visit Castle, a facility in California’s Central Valley
that it has been using as a training course for its self-driving vehicles.
It is aiming for Level 4 autonomy, an official classification for a vehicle
that is capable of driving itself, with no human behind the wheel, in most environments and road conditions.
It believes that nothing short of Level 4 counts as autonomous, and
that bypassing Level 3 (a lower classification, in which some human attention is still required) is necessary to keep people safe on the roads.
The company declined to put a date on when it might release self-driving cars to the general public, and Mr. Krafcik spoke only in generalities about its plans, saying
that it would focus on ride-hailing and autonomous trucking as possible early business models
