Honda is the latest car manufacturer approved to test self-driving cars on California roads
Honda gets California approval for self-driving cars on roads — Honda Motor Co Ltd has received a permit from the state of California to drive its autonomous vehicles on public streets …
Context & Ripple Effects
Honda is entering California's public-road testing program at the start of what the related coverage shows becoming a steady cadence of approvals: Nvidia began testing on the state's public roads after its own go-ahead in late 2016, followed by Samsung securing a permit in September 2017.
Each new name on the DMV's permit list has widened the field beyond dedicated autonomy startups to automakers, component makers, and ride-hailing platforms — Lyft secured a testing permit in November 2017 — before the program escalated to Waymo's driverless testing permit, the first issued without a human behind the wheel. Honda's approval matters because it marks mainstream manufacturers treating the state's sign-off as a required step rather than an experiment.
First-order effects
- Honda can now run autonomous vehicles on California's public streets with a test permit, placing it alongside Nvidia, Samsung, and Lyft on the DMV's approved-tester list.
Second-order effects
- Every additional approval raises the competitive cost of sitting out: rivals without a permit face testing only in other jurisdictions, while cross-role players like Nvidia blur the line between AV supplier and AV developer.
- Ride-hailing operators such as Lyft gain more manufacturer partners eligible to supply autonomous vehicles for their networks.
Third-order effects
- California's DMV is consolidating into the de facto national gatekeeper for autonomous-vehicle testing, with the program's own evolution — from permitted road tests to fully driverless operation — defining how far along the autonomy ladder any company can publicly go.
The trend: State-level permitting is hardening into the standard regulatory gateway through which every automaker, supplier, and platform must pass to deploy autonomous vehicles on public roads.