‘Quality' of Miles Driven Will Spell ‘Validation’ of Self-Driving Cars, Says GM CEO

It’s not just the number of test miles driven that will spell “validation” of autonomous vehicles, but also “the quality of the miles," said General Motors CEO Mary Barra on an earnings call Tuesday. “To our knowledge, we're the only one testing our autonomous vehicles in downtown San Francisco, which is a pretty dense urban environment with a lot more, I'll say, opportunities to learn from different situations,” said Barra in Q&A. “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. “There's quite a bit of work going on there. So I would say it's much more involved than just miles traveled, and that's what we're working on right now, and we'll share more.” Lyft’s recent announcements it’s starting its own autonomous-driving research efforts won’t affect their self-driving alliance (see 1601040068), Barra said. “The partnership that we have with Lyft was never exclusive for either Lyft or for General Motors.” GM's efforts without Lyft are "quite far along in our autonomous-vehicle development based on the fact that shortly we'll have 180 vehicles testing,” she said. That “grows, frankly, on a weekly basis,” she said. In partnering with Lyft, GM also still believes in the “opportunity to deploy” self-driving cars in a ride-hailing environment, she said. Integrating autonomous vehicles “in a ride-sharing fleet I think allows you to get the best exposure for the vehicle to keep learning as we go forward, but I would say that's in the early stages of sub-deployment," she said. "We have a good relationship with Lyft."