As robot cars prowl the streets of Castle, a fake city built in the California desert, humans concoct elaborate scenarios to test the limits of the self-driven car’s awareness and reactions. Google engineers use cones, signs, mannequins, and even other cars, to devise situations that challenge the driverless cars to respond as human drivers would.
The top tech companies are in a furious race to bring the first truly driverless cars to the mass market and, in doing so, change transportation forever. Self-driving cars have been tested in all sorts of conditions, but the complex algorithms behind the technology have yet to conquer one of the most baffling challenges — our urban infrastructure. Waymo, the project founded by Google’s parent company Alphabet, is trying to take the lead.
It’s a big gamble though, with three out of four Americans doubting that fully autonomous cars are safe. One high-profile incident could quickly sour public opinion on the technology, setting it back years.
The normally secretive Google recently gave the Atlantic exclusive access to one of its testing facilities. The 100-acre fake town is named after the Castle Air Force base near the town of Merced. To call it a “city” is a bit misleading — all that matters is where the rubber meets the road, literally. There are no buildings in the testing area, just roads, driveways, and intersections.
The team tries to recreate situations the robot cars are likely to encounter in real-life environments, such as one-way traffic and a bike lane next to parallel parking spaces. “I was really keen on installing something with parallel parking along it,” Steph Villegas, a program manager for Waymo, said. “Something like this happens in suburban downtowns. People are coming out of storefronts or a park. People are walking between cars, maybe crossing the street carrying stuff.”
In addition to what Villegas calls “props,” some tests also involve humans, also known as professional pedestrians. Is it difficult to do your job while worrying about being run over by a robot? “We just have to learn to trust,” Cassandra Hernandez, one such pro, said.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.
Missing out on the self-driving future is a tough pill to swallow, especially as a car enthusiast. But that is what Tesla handed us on Wednesday, without a hint of mercy.
During its October 21, 2026 earnings call, Elon Musk told investors the Cybercab is meant mainly as a ride service. Further, nearly all of them will be owned and managed by Tesla.