Autonomous vehicles under testing permits have collectively covered over 4 million miles on California’s public roads in 2024, according to a new data report from the
California Department of Motor Vehicles (CDMV).
This year’s total, officially standing at 4,498,066 miles, covers two kinds of permits: 3,945,171 miles with a safety driver and 552,895 miles in fully-autonomous mode.
This figure has dropped by 50% from the over 9 million miles reported in 2023.
Permit holder companies that have been approved by the CDMV to test autonomous vehicles on Californian roads, without a safety driver, include:
- Apollo Autonomous Driving
- AutoX Technologies
- Nuro
- Waymo
- WeRide
- Zoox
Under state regulations, companies are only required to report public road testing. Activities on private roads or out-of-state, as well as any testing below Society of Automotive Engineers Level 3 or in simulation, are not covered in these reports.
Currently, 31 companies hold permits for testing with a safety driver, six are approved for driverless testing and three are authorised to make autonomous technology commercially available outside of a testing program.
Permit holders for testing with a safety driver include:
- Aimotive
- Apollo Autonomous Driving
- Aurora
- AutoX
- BEEP
- Black Sesame
- Cruise
- Gatik AI
- Helm.ai
- Imagry
- May Mobility
- Merc Benz
- Mobileye
- Motional
- Nissan
- Nullmax
- Nuro
- NVIDIA
- PlusAI
- Pony.ai
- Qualcomm
- Saif
- Telenav
- Tesla
- Valeo North America
- Vueron
- Waymo
- WeRide
- Woven Planet
- XMotors.ai
- Zoox
The
annual disengagement reports, outline the testing circumstances, locations and the specific conditions under which human drivers had to take controls of vehicles in fully-autonomous states occurred.
Find more information on permit holders for self-driving vehicles in California
here.
