Apple at present has a allow to check autonomous vehicle tech on California’s public roads provided that the corporate has a security driver behind the wheel—a primary step that enables autonomous car firms to gather extra information on streets and decide how their software program handles itself in visitors.

A small handful of different firms, together with Alphabet’s Waymo and Amazon’s Zoox, have the state’s permission to check with out security drivers. California permits simply two firms—Waymo and autonomous supply agency Nuro—to deploy industrial self-driving expertise in California.

Apple’s testing totals are nonetheless nicely under these of extra superior autonomous car builders’, although the state’s reporting tips make them tough to match straight. Waymo drove 3.7 million testing miles in California with a security driver behind the wheel, and 1.2 million testing miles with nobody behind the wheel. And the corporate drove greater than 1.6 million extra miles with passengers within the automobile, in line with separate government documents. (Waymo can be working a driverless service in Phoenix, Arizona, and testing in Austin, Texas; its operations in these cities aren’t lined on this information).

Even Cruise, General Motors’ troubled autonomous car division, which had its allow to deploy in California suspended in October and halted nationwide testing quickly after, drove nearly 2.65 million testing miles within the state in 2023—nearly 2.2 million greater than Apple.