//php echo do_shortcode(‘[responsivevoice_button voice=”US English Male” buttontext=”Listen to Post”]’) ?>

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is the pioneer in testing autonomous vehicles (AVs), which began in 2015. The California DMV released its 2022 figures in February 2023, which includes data from December 2021 to November 2022 on statistics and trends, with perspectives for eight years of results. Waymo and Cruise were again the leaders in AV testing in California.

The California DMV releases data annually on AV miles traveled and other stats.

The data does have its limitations but provides monthly data on AV miles traveled and statistics on disengagements, such as how often the safety driver takes control of driving from the software driver.

The AV test results clearly show that most companies are improving their miles per disengagement. Cruise was the clear leader in 2022, with nearly 96,000 miles between disengagements—Cruise had only nine disengagements and drove over 863,000 miles. Cruise is also the leader in driverless AV miles, with over 546,000 miles in 2022.

Waymo is the leader in total AV miles, with over 10 million miles since 2015. Waymo was the leader in miles per disengagement in most previous years but dropped dramatically in 2021 and has fallen far below Cruise in 2021 and 2022. Waymo now has the most permits for driverless AVs and is likely to challenge Cruise in 2023.

Many of the leading Chinese AV companies are testing in California and are far behind Waymo and Cruise in AV miles. They do perform well, however, in miles per disengagement—which shows they are leveraging their testing experience in China.

Cruise summary

Cruise lagged behind Waymo in AV miles from 2016 to 2022 but surpassed Waymo in miles per disengagement in 2021 and increased this lead greatly in 2022. Does this mean Cruise has taken the lead from Waymo in San Francisco? Maybe, but those unintended stops that created traffic jams and other issues detracted from Cruise’s recent data:

• Cruise was the overwhelming leader in driverless AV miles, with over 546,000—up from 6,000+ in 2021.
• Cruise was second in AV miles with safety drivers, with over 863,000 miles—which declined slightly from 876,000 in 2021. Total AV miles since 2016 surpassed 3.9 million in 2022 and reached nearly 4.8 million, with driverless miles included.
• Cruise used 350 AVs and had 388 permits for driving with safety drivers. It had 222 AV permits for driverless testing in 2022.
• Cruise’s miles per disengagement reached 95,900 in 2022, compared with 41,719 in 2021—an increase of 130%. The 2022 number was nearly twice as high as AutoX, which was in second place.

Waymo summary

Waymo was the AV testing leader in California from 2015 through 2020 for miles per disengagement. Waymo has been the leader in AV miles every year except in 2020:

• Waymo was the clear leader in 2022 with 2.9 million miles with safety drivers, compared with 2.3 million in 2021.
• Waymo topped 10 million miles with safety drivers from 2015 through 2022.
• In driverless AV testing, Waymo was a distant second to Cruise, with nearly 52,000 miles in 2022. Waymo did not test with driverless AVs in 2021.
• Waymo used 383 AVs with safety drivers and had permits for 688 AVs. Waymo had permits for 317 driverless AVs in 2022.
• Waymo was the leader in miles per disengagement from 2015 through 2020, which reached 29,945 in 2020. Waymo’s miles per disengagement dropped to 7,965 in 2021, with an increase to 17,060 in 2022. This is well below Cruise, which was 5.6× higher in 2022. It is hard to tell what caused Waymo’s drop in 2021. One reason is that much of Waymo’s AV testing moved to San Francisco in 2021, which poses a more difficult driving environment compared with other suburban roadways and highways. Cruise’s California testing has been nearly exclusively in San Francisco from 2016.

AV testing trends

There have been over 65 companies participating in California AV testing, but only 28 companies provided test data in 2022 with safety drivers. Currently, 41 companies have permits for AV testing in California.

Total AV miles with safety drivers was 4.58 million miles in 2022—an increase of 12% from 2021. They used 1,081 AVs and had permits for 1,563.

Total driverless AV miles was 602,000 in 2022, with Cruise accounting for about 90% of the total. In 2021, driverless AV miles was 25,000.

The next figure summarizes the leading companies in AV miles from 2015 to 2022 in two separate graphs due to the high values of Waymo and Cruise. The left figure shows the top three companies—Waymo, Cruise and Pony.ai. The right figure shows other leading companies, with Pony.ai included to show the difference in scale.

Waymo and Cruise lead in AV testing in California and have accounted for 81% of the 17.2 million miles driven through 2022 with safety drivers. Waymo’s cumulative share is over 58% and Cruise is nearly 23%.

Zoox and Nuro are fourth and fifth in cumulative AV miles. Apple, AutoX, Mercedes-Benz, WeRide and DiDi are next in the top 10. Apple was fourth in 2022, with 125,000 AV miles.

Apple performed poorly in miles per disengagement in most years, including 2022. In 2022, Apple accounted for 71% of all disengagements and 2.7% of AV miles. In 2021, Apple had the highest number of disengagements, at nearly 26% of the total, versus 0.3% of the miles.

For both 2021 and 2022, Apple had only about 21 miles per disengagement. The tech giant had better miles per disengagement in 2020 at 145 but is still very low compared with Cruise, Waymo and others. Average miles per disengagement for all companies was 544 miles in 2022. If you subtract Apple’s miles and disengagements, the average for the remaining 27 companies was 1,879 miles per disengagement in 2022.

The next figure shows the results of the top four U.S. and Chinese companies testing in California. The left bar chart shows AV miles from 2018 through 2022. The right bar chart has miles per disengagement for the same eight companies.

Several of the Chinese AV players are doing well in miles per disengagement, with AutoX in second place at 49,314 miles per disengagement. WeRide was in third place at 21,520 miles per disengagement, with DiDi in fourth place at 19,133 miles. They are leveraging their experience and testing in China.

The next figure tracks eight years of disengagement for the top 10 companies based on 2022 rankings.

Cruise is now the clear leader, followed by three Chinese AV companies in 2022. AutoX had the highest miles per disengagement in 2021, at 50,108—just ahead of Cruise.

Among the U.S companies, Argo and Waymo were second and third. Argo was doing quite well for the three years it participated. It is interesting that the Argo founders are getting venture-capitalist funding to “restart” another AV company.

Among the AV data for all 28 companies that reported AV driving in California in 2022, total AV miles with safety drivers was 4.58 million. Waymo accounted for over 63% of total miles, while Cruise had a nearly 19% share of miles. Total disengagements were 8,420, with Apple accounting for 71% of all disengagements.

Driverless AV testing started in 2021 and only six companies have received permits for driving without a safety driver. Pony.ai lost its permit and did not participate in 2022. In 2021, Apollo and Pony.ai had over 9,000 driverless AV miles. Cruise dominated in 2022, with over 90% of total driverless AV miles. Waymo had the most driverless permits at 317 AVs, or 57% of the total. It looks like Waymo will challenge Cruise for the most driverless AV miles in 2023.