Volkswagen’s self-driving cars are about to hit a new city

Germany is taking on the U.S. (and ) when it comes to autonomous vehicles. On Wednesday, Volkswagen and Hamburg announced a self-driving pilot program on the city’s streets.

While many cities and states in the U.S. have been testing robo-cars for years, Germany only recently approved testing. Munich has been an autonomous hot spot thanks to BMW’s research center, but now a nearly 2-mile stretch of Hamburg will allow a fleet of five e-Golf vehicles to drive the streets. 

There will be safety drivers behind the wheel testing out Level 4 automation, which is almost fully autonomous, but still requires a human in some rare instances, such as unplanned street closures or severe weather.

The pilot is part of a bigger urban test center Hamburg is hoping to finish by 2020. That “test track” will include 5.5 miles of connected roads, meaning the self-driving cars will be able to communicate with traffic lights and other city infrastructure. Hamburg city officials said 37 traffic lights and a bridge will send information out.

The VW vehicles in Hamburg are clearly marked as self-driving cars and noticeably have sensing equipment on the roof and around the car including 11 light-detecting LiDAR sensors, seven radar sensors, and 14 cameras. The cars transmit 5 gigabytes of data per minute while driving.

This isn’t the first time VW has put its autonomous vehicles to the test. It already tests in California and other parts of Germany — and has plans to enter China. The company is investing $50 billion in “new” car tech like electric cars and, of course, self-driving systems. 

Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess said in an interview last year that the Germany car maker is “determined to catch up” to heavy-hitters like Google’s Waymo, which already operates a self-driving taxi service near Phoenix, Arizona.