Ryan Randazzo

The Republic | azcentral.com

Google is expanding its self-driving cars to cities around Chandler

The company is testing in Arizona and three other states

The company also is building a large headquarters for the project in Chandler

Google is expanding its self-driving car program from Chandler to nearby areas of Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe and Gilbert.

The company, a subsidiary of Mountain View, Calif.-based Alphabet Inc., is testing its technology in Arizona as it prepares to offer cars that can drive themselves with no human guidance.

For now, the Lexus SUVs and Google prototype cars driving in Arizona, Mountain View, Kirkland, Wash. and Austin, have drivers who can take control when needed and passengers who record how the cars handle tricky driving situations.

"As we’ve driven through Chandler, we’ve experienced everything from extreme heat to watering trucks, five-stack traffic lights and our first haboobs," spokeswoman Lauren Barriere said. "It’s these unique experiences that brought us to the Valley in the first place, and it’s what’s helping our engineers improve our self-driving capabilities every day."

She said the testing has already expanded to parts of the four nearby cities.

"We appreciate the support and enthusiasm of the mayors of each of these cities, and we hope to learn more as we experience new roads in the Valley," she said.

Google began mapping Chandler this year as it expanded its self-driving car program to Arizona. August was the start of autonomous testing in the city, using Lexus RX450h vehicles. The company reported about 54 self-driving cars on the roads in the four states as of Sept. 30, with about a dozen of them in Arizona.

Arizona's operations are picking up though, with the company announcing a 39,000-square-foot operations center in Chandler that will be used for training and vehicle maintenance. The company is renovating the temporary space it has been occupying at 601 S. 54th St., where it will base its Arizona operations.

Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny announced the new facility Wednesday night during an economic update, and said Google has created a buzz in the city.

“We are really excited that they showed interest in Chandler,” he said Thursday. “They could do the program part of it anywhere. They could have leased space anywhere. They picked Chandler we because we are at the forefront of technology.”

The city’s economic development team helped Google identify the space they are renovating, he said.

Google joins companies such as Intel Corp., Garmin, Orbital ATK, Fusionsoft, and Rogers Corp. in the city.

“That reputation has helped us,” Tibshraeny said.

The Google vehicles are finding that careless drivers are often more dangerous than weather or the quirks of autonomous technology. Three of the Google Lexus vehicles were involved in collisions in August in Chandler, including what it believed to be the first time a drunk driver crashed into one of Google's test cars.

In two of the accidents, Google's drivers were manually operating the vehicles, and in the third, the Google vehicle was rear-ended while operating in autonomous mode, according to the company.

The only accident so far caused by Google in autonomous mode was a widely publicized fender-bender this year in California when a Google car merged into a bus to avoid debris in its lane.

MORE: Republic reporter test drives a self-driving Tesla