page_title: History of self-driving cars
section_title: 2010s
hierarchical_section_title: History of self-driving cars / History / 2010s
caption_attribution_description: English: A Google self-driving car at the intersection of Junction Ave and North Rengstorff Ave in Mountain View. This picture was taken from the bike lane of North Rengstorff Ave.
context_page_description: Experiments have been conducted on self-driving cars since at least the 1920s; promising trials took place in the 1950s and work has proceeded since then. The first self-sufficient and truly autonomous cars appeared in the 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University's Navlab and ALV projects in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich's Eureka Prometheus Project in 1987. Since then, numerous major companies and research organizations have developed working autonomous vehicles including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Continental Automotive Systems, Autoliv Inc., Bosch, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, Volvo, Vislab from University of Parma, Oxford University and Google. In July 2013, Vislab demonstrated BRAiVE, a vehicle that moved autonomously on a mixed traffic route open to public traffic.
  As of 2019, twenty-nine U.S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars. In Europe, cities in Belgium, France, Italy and the UK are planning to operate transport systems for driverless cars, and Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain have allowed testing robotic cars in traffic.
  In 2020, the EU and Japan are also on track to regulate automated cars.
context_section_description: Many major automotive manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Audi, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, and Volvo, are in the process of testing driverless car systems. BMW has been testing driverless systems since around 2005, while in 2010, Audi sent a driverless Audi TTS to the top of Pike’s Peak at close to race speeds. In 2011, GM created the EN-V (short for Electric Networked Vehicle), an autonomous electric urban vehicle. In 2012, Volkswagen began testing a "Temporary Auto Pilot" (TAP) system that will allow a car to drive itself at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour (130 km/h) on the highway. Ford has conducted extensive research into driverless systems and vehicular communication systems. In January 2013, Toyota demonstrated a partially self-driving car with numerous sensors and communication systems. Other programs in the field include the 2GetThere passenger vehicles from the Netherlands and the DARPA Grand Challenge in the USA; some plans for bimodal public transport systems include autonomous cars as a component.
  In 2010, Italy's VisLab from the University of Parma, led by Professor Alberto Broggi, ran the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge (VIAC), a 9,900-mile (15,900 km) test run which marked the first intercontinental land journey completed by autonomous vehicles. Four electric vans made a 100-day journey, leaving Parma, Italy, on 20 July 2010, and arriving at the Shanghai Expo in China on 28 October. 
  The research project is co-funded by the European Union CORDIS program.
  In 2010, the Institute of Control Engineering of the Technische Universität Braunschweig demonstrated the first autonomous driving on public streets in Germany with the research vehicle Leonie.  It was the first car licensed for autonomous driving on the streets and highways in Germany.
  In October 2010, an attorney for the California Department of Motor Vehicles, raised concerns that "[t]he technology is ahead of the law in many areas", citing state laws that "all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle".
  In 2011, the Freie Universität Berlin developed two autonomous cars to drive in the innercity traffic of Berlin in Germany. Led by the AutoNOMOS group, the two vehicles Spirit of Berlin and MadeInGermany handled intercity traffic, traffic lights and roundabouts between International Congress Centrum and Brandenburg Gate. It was financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
  Nevada passed a law in June 2011 concerning the operation of autonomous cars in Nevada, which went into effect on March 1, 2012. A Toyota Prius modified with Google's experimental driverless technology was licensed by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in May 2012. This was the first license issued in the United States for a self-driven car. License plates issued in Nevada for testing autonomous cars have a red background and feature an infinity symbol (∞) on the left side because, according to the DMV Director,  "...using the infinity symbol was the best way to represent the 'car of the future'". Nevada's test regulations required a person behind the wheel and one in the passenger's seat during tests.
  On May 1, 2012, a 22 km (14 mi) driving test was administered to a Google self-driving car by Nevada motor vehicle examiners in a test route in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada.  The autonomous car passed the test, but was not tested at roundabouts, no-signal railroad crossings, or school zones.
  In April 2012, Florida became the second state in the United States to allow the testing of autonomous cars on public roads, and California became the third when Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law at Google Headquarters in Mountain View.
  In 2013, on July 12, VisLab conducted another pioneering test of autonomous vehicles, during which a robotic vehicle drove in downtown Parma with no human control, successfully navigating roundabouts, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and other common hazards.
  In August 2013, Daimler R&D with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology/FZI, made a Mercedes-Benz S-class veh
caption: Google's in-house driverless car. As of July 2015[update], Google's driverless test vehicles had been involved in 14 minor accidents since 2009.[98]
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