Oliver Haslam·

Apple Doubled The Amount Of Self-Driving Car Miles During Testing Last Year

Apple’s self-driving cars spent more than twice as long driving around by themselves during 2020 than the previous year according to stats shared by the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

The number of miles driven by these cars is public information and it shows that Apple drove 18,805 miles during 2020. That’s more than double the number of miles covered in 2019.

As noted by 9to5Mac, the number of miles isn’t necessarily the important part here. According to the stats, the number of disengagements also saw a drop during the year.

Disengagements are times where a human had to take over the driving from the car, including times where the car handed control back itself for various reasons.

In terms of disengagements, Apple reported a total of 130 disengagement in 2020, which equates to a disengagement every 145 miles, compared with every 118 miles in 2019.

Here is how Apple’s self-driving testing in California has progressed over the last three years:

  • 2020: 18,805 miles, 6.91 disengagements per 1,000 miles
  • 2019: 7,544 miles, 8.35 disengagements per 1,000 miles
  • 2018: 79,745 miles, 871.65 disengagements per 1,000 miles

Notably, Tesla didn’t file any self-driving miles during the course of 2020, while Waymo and Cruise saw disengagement rates of 1 every 12,000 miles. That puts Apple’s numbers into stark contrast, although we’re thought to still be a number of years out from any potential Apple Car launch.

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