2020 Disengagement Reports from California

Once again this year, the California DMV has required a so-called Disengagement Report from all companies licensed to test and operate autonomous vehicles on all public roads in California. It is the only report known in the world that provides an objective, albeit limited, look at the state of development of this technology across several dozen manufacturers.

For the period from December 2019 to November 2020, a total of 29 companies reported test drives, four of which (Argo, Atlas Robotics, Deeprooute.AI, and QCraft) reported for the first time for the full year. Thirty-four companies reported no test drives in California, and one other company (KAIZR) did not report at all. Of these 34 companies, seven did not renew their license (Bosch, Changan, Faraday Future, SAIC, Samsung, Torc Robotics, TuSimple).

The figures include the number of kilometers driven and the so-called disengagements. A disengagement is therefore considered to be this action when a safety driver takes control of the autonomous vehicle. This calculation can then be used to determine how long each manufacturer can drive autonomously across all deployed vehicles. While the definition of disengagement gives manufacturers room for interpretation, it is the best set of numbers available to the public today to provide insight into the state of self-driving technologies from various manufacturers. This data reported to the California DMV does not include data from other regions.

This year, Waymo is again in the lead, after Baidu indicated a surprisingly (and presumably cheated) big jump ahead last year. It is striking that Baidu did not report any figures this year.

Waymo saw a big improvement from last year (see 2019 Disengagement Report) from 13,219 miles per disengagement to 29,944 miles. Cruise also jumped from 12,221 miles per disengagement to 28,520 miles. Apple also improved from 118 to 145 miles.

Here are the exact numbers in tabular form.

Manufacturer	Miles	Km	Dis-engage-ments	Miles per Dis-engage-ment	Km per Dise-ngage-ment
Waymo	628,839	1,006,142	21	29,944.69	47,911.50
Cruise	770,049	1,232,079	27	28,520.34	45,632.55
AutoX	40,734	65,174	2	20,367.00	32,587.20
Pony.AI	225,496	360,794	21	10,737.90	17,180.65
Argo.AI	21,037	33,659	2	10,518.59	16,829.74
WeRide	13,014	20,822	2	6,507.00	10,411.20
DiDi	10,401	16,642	2	5,200.75	8,321.19
Nuro	55,370	88,592	11	5,033.62	8,053.79
Deeproute.AI	10,018	16,029	3	3,339.33	5,342.93
Zoox	102,521	164,034	63	1,627.32	2,603.71
QCraft	7,582	12,131	16	473.88	758.20
Aurora	12,208	19,532	37	329.93	527.90
Lyft	32,731	52,370	123	266.11	425.77
Gatik.AI	2,352	3,763	11	213.82	342.11
Apple	18,805	30,088	130	144.66	231.45
Nissan	395	631	4	98.63	157.80
BMW	122	195	3	40.67	65.07
Aimotive	2,987	4,779	113	26.43	42.29
Mercedes	29,984	47,974	1,167	25.69	41.11
NVIDIA	3,033	4,853	125	24.26	38.82
Qualcomm	1,727	2,763	90	19.19	30.70
SF Motors	875	1,400	61	14.34	22.94
Atlas R.	47	76	10	4.74	7.58
EasyMile	424	678	128	3.31	5.30
Toyota	2,875	4,600	1,215	2.37	3.79
Telenav	4	6	2	2.00	3.20
Udelv	66	106	49	1.35	2.16
Ridecell	148	236	189	0.78	1.25
Valeo	49	78	99	0.49	0.79
TOTAL	1,955,208	3,128,333	3,695	529.15	846.64

Cruise drove the most miles this year; Waymo scaled back its test drives by quite a bit.

Manufacturer	Miles	Kilometers
Cruise	770,049	1,232,079
Waymo	628,839	1,006,142
Pony.AI	225,496	360,794
Zoox	102,521	164,034
Nuro	55,370	88,592
AutoX	40,734	65,174
Lyft	32,731	52,370
Mercedes Benz	29,984	47,974
Argo.AI	21,037	33,659
Apple	18,805	30,088
WeRide	13,014	20,822
Aurora	12,208	19,532
DiDi	10,401	16,642
Deeproute.AI	10,018	16,029
QCraft	7,582	12,131
NVIDIA	3,033	4,853
Aimotive	2,987	4,779
Toyota	2,875	4,600
Gatik AI	2,352	3,763
Qualcomm	1,727	2,763
SF Motors	875	1,400
EasyMile	424	678
Nissan	395	631
Ridecell	148	236
BMW	122	195
Udelv	66	106
Valeo	49	78
Atlas Robotics	47	76
Telenav	4	6
TOTAL	1,955,208	3,128,333

For the first time, DMV also shared who initiated the disengagement – the safety driver or the system itself – and where the disengagement occurred – street or highway.

Some of the manufacturers also gave their assessment of the figures:

1/5 Today, CA DMV released its disengagement report. As we’ve said before, we appreciate what it’s trying to do w/ the report, but the metrics provide limited value in assessing the capabilities of the Waymo Driver, or in distinguishing its performance from other A/V companies.

— Waymo (@Waymo) February 9, 2021

1/ The DMV just put out its annual AV report. In the last 3 months of the year, @Cruise had 0 reportable disengagements in ~200k miles, a ~10x improvement over the same period a year before.

Humans got *worse* last year. AVs got 10x better. Let's celebrate!

Some highlights:

— Kyle Vogt (@kvogt) February 9, 2021

This article was also published in German.