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Automated Car Set To Drive Itself From San Francisco To New York

NEW YORK(CBSNewYork) -- A road trip from California to New York that starts on Sunday is about to make headlines.

It has been billed as the longest journey ever for a self-driving car.

As CBS2's Kara Tsuboi reported, three people will be riding in the modified Audi, but for a majority of the time no one will actually be driving.

"It's the longest coast to coast journey of an automated car from San Francisco to New York," John Absmeier said.

Automated Car Set To Drive Itself From San Francisco To New York

The car will make the 3,500 mile trip using Delphi's self-driving technology which includes roughly 20 sensing systems.

"Around the periphery there's forward vision, there's radar, there's also lidar, the car has high accuracy GPS, and also vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to infrastructure communications," Absmeier said.

Delphi is putting its autonomous driving system to the long-distance test to collect more data about highways, from on-ramp to off-ramp, the technology will control the car with an operator behind the wheel in case of emergency.

"We're using radar and vision systems and those rely on the infrastructure and vehicles around them for the car to make decisions," Absmeier said.

They won't be hands free 100 percent of the time. In urban environments, operators will take over and drive.

Only five places in the U.S. including California, Washington D.C. and Nevada have specific regulations for autonomous driving. For the rest of the states the operator will follow local road laws.

"We'll have to follow the laws of that state. In some cases we'll have to keep a hand on the wheel and abide by the local law in those areas," Absmeier said.

Delphi hopes the road ahead includes automakers putting its technology into future cars.

The car will drive for six to eight hours at a time. It was set to leave San Francisco on Sunday and should arrive in New York for the auto show, the first week of April.

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