Two tech giants have now brought their their autonomous vehicle projects to the Seattle area for testing, and both chose the region for the same reason: rainy conditions.
Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s (Nasdaq: GOOGL) self-driving project, Waymo, said that over the next few months electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles will be driving through Bellevue "to gain more real world driving experience during Washington's numerous rainy days."
Amazon.com Inc. subsidiary Zoox said something similar last year when it sent out an undisclosed number of self-driving Toyota Highlanders.
The move is built on the area's reputation for wet weather — though Seattle gets less than 40 inches of rain per year, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, less than many major East Coast cities.
But the company also said it chose the region because the driving environment was similar in certain respects to other western U.S. cities where it's based.
Waymo, which has been in the Puget Sound region since 2015, has a presence in Bellevue already, including a small number of engineers. It has tested vehicles here before, but the company said they were all manually driven.
"Our focus was nascent, learning how our vehicles and other road users behave in the rain and exposing our sensors to various conditions," the company said. "Today, our testing has matured to include both autonomous and manual driving."
Unlike Zoox, Waymo disclosed the number of cars it's bringing to Bellevue's streets. Will Shepherdson, a Waymo product manager, said six cars will be test driving over the next six months.
The cars won't be empty — an "autonomous specialist" will be in the driver's seat, just as they were for previous tests.
Waymo operates a fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Phoenix called Waymo One.
Zoox, which was bought by Amazon in 2020 for a reported $1.2 billion, was started as an autonomous taxi service. Amazon has denied any speculation about folding the company's technology into its logistics division, and said the acquisition was just to help it scale up.
