News Tonight Africa

Tech giant Google has released its self-driving car report for January 2015, revealing that the company's self-driving cars drive 3 million simulated miles every day.

To highlight the 3 million simulated miles racked up by Google's self-driving cars every day from another perspective, the company has said that the mentioned virtual drives of the cars is "the equivalent of circling the equator five times every hour."

With regard to the significance of simulation in testing self-driving vehicles, Google said that whenever the company improves or refines a key feature in the self-driving technology, it carries out a test of the modified feature in a simulated environment using thousands of variations.

Google has said in its self-driving car report for January that simulated drives play an essential role in the testing process for self- driving vehicles. However, the company also added alongside that actual road testing of the self-driving cars is extremely vital, as it puts the cars in real-world situations.

Acknowledging the fact that "testing on public roads is a vital part of developing our software, allowing us to drive in new environments and come across new experiences," Google said that the "powerful driving simulator" which the company has developed allows it to "learn without a single car leaving the garage."