Google reveals first real build of their self-driving car prototype

For quite some time, Google has been working on a self-driving car. We’ve seen progress over the past few months in Google’s foray into the auto field, but the first working car to debut was only an early prototype. In fact, the car in the self-driving promotional video didn’t even have working headlights! Now that’s all changed as Google showed off their first “complete prototype” for the very first time in an announcement today.

The company has been working on a number of different prototypes to test different areas of the car. For instance, they would have two separate test cars: one that focuses on actual car parts like steering wheels or brakes, and another for self-driving parts like computers and sensors. Now, they’ve come up with a fully-complete prototype.

Google says they’ll spend the holidays testing the car on their test tracks, and they hope to get the car on the streets sometime within the year 2015. In the mean time, Google’s safety drivers will continue to oversee the way the vehicle runs, using temporary manual controls as needed while they continue to test and learn.

This hopefully means that we should begin seeing some more progress come out of Google’s self-driving labs in the near future.