Self-Driving Cars Flock to Arizona, Land of Good Weather and No Rules

Arizona is welcoming a new wave of settlers.

No, not snowbirds escaping harsh northern winters. Techies, mostly from California—Silicon Valley, to be precise—coming to the desert to fulfill their quest to flood the roads with self-driving cars.

Mobileye is the latest arrival. The firm announced Wednesday that it will build a fleet of 100 autonomous vehicles and test the first of them on the public roads of the Copper State.

The Israeli firm that Intel recently bought for $15 billion joins Uber and Google spinoff Waymo, both of which have put more than 100 robocars on the roads of Tempe and Phoenix, respectively. The two companies use those cars to ferry people here and there with engineers at the wheel, ready to take control when needed.

Arizona has a few things going for it. It’s relatively close to Silicon Valley (a 12-hour drive or two-hour flight). The weather—hot, yes, but also clear with little rain—favors the sensors self-driving cars use to see the world, especially cameras (which can’t see snow-covered lane lines, for example) and lidar (heavy rain can futz with the lasers).

The traffic is generally calm and the roads are in pretty good shape. “That makes the technical challenge of it easier,” says Karl Iagnemma, CEO of the Massachusetts autonomous tech firm Nutonomy.

To read more of the original article, go to Wired.

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