Google expands self-driving car trial to rain and hills of Washington state

Taking advantage of Washington's lack of autonomous car regulation to make Google's cameras and sensors perform better in rain and on hilly terrain

Google's self-driving cars are about to get their toughest test to date: a rainy spring in the hilly Pacific north-west. On 3 February, Google's holding company Alphabet announced that its self-driving cars would take to public roads in Kirkland, Washington, a small city close to Seattle.

It is the third city to welcome Google's autonomous vehicles, after Google's home-town of Mountain View in California, and Austin, Texas. Google selected Kirkland because of its reliable rainfall, gentle hills and convenient Google campus as a base of operations.