Google Tests Driverless Car In Hipster Haven AustinGoogle Tests Driverless Car In Hipster Haven Austin

IoT Drives The Future Of Connected Cars

Search engine giant Google announced with a blog post that it has chosen Austin, Texas, as a new testing location for its self-driving car project.

One of the company's Lexus SUVs is there now, safety drivers aboard, driving a few square miles north and northeast of downtown Austin.

"It's summertime, so millions of Americans are packing up the car and hitting the road -- and so are we," the company announced. "It's important for us to get experience testing our software in different driving environments, traffic patterns and road conditions -- so we're ready to take on Austin's pedicabs, pickup trucks, and everything in between. Keep it weird for us, Austin, and visit our website to let us know how we're driving."

Google has been steadily crossing more and more public streets in recent months. In May the company announced its driving car prototype would begin cruising public roads in Mountain View, Calif., where Google has its headquarters.

It's not the only player in the nascent driverless car space, however. Apple is rumored to have a driverless car in the works. In April automotive technology specialist Delphi completed the first successful coast-to-coast trip by an automated vehicle -- an Audi Q4 SUV nicknamed Roadrunner, which drove from Treasure Island in San Francisco to New York -- a distance of nearly 3,400 miles.

The nine-day trip, which crossed 15 states and Washington, D.C., was planned to expose the technology to complex driving situations such as traffic circles, bridges, tunnels, construction zones, a variety of weather conditions, and of course, aggressive drivers.

[Are we offloading too much brainwork to the Web? Read 'Google Effect' Is Real, Dangerous, Says Kaspersky.]

Regardless of the company backing the technology, safety concerns have persisted, which led Google to publish a blog post touting its safety record.

Google's fleet of more than 20 self-driving vehicles and its team of safety drivers have driven 1.7 million miles -- manually and autonomously combined. The cars have self-driven nearly a million of those miles, and now complete an average of around 10,000 self-driven miles a week.

Those vehicles have been involved in 11 minor accidents during that period, said Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, in an op-ed post in May.

Google's driverless car project isn't the only high-tech project the company is currently expanding -- earlier this week an FCC filing was discovered that indicates Google might be back at work on its infamous Glass wearable device.