W2-D1 Humans take back seat as Waymo’s driverless cars pass Phoenix milestone

地道表达

1. The first truly autonomous cars — vehicles that cruise the streets with no one behind the wheel — have finally arrived.
   [vehicles]车辆
   [cruise] 巡航
   [behind the wheel]驾驶；掌舵；主管；

2. Waymo, which began life as Google’s self-driving car project, disclosed yesterday that it had let its driverless cars loose in parts of Phoenix, Arizona, with nobody in the front seats to take over in case of emergency.
   [disclosed]公开；揭露；

3. Members of the public taking part in a Waymo trial in the desert city in the US south-west will be able to summon the vehicles through a ride-hailing app “in the next few months”, the group said.
   [summon]召唤；召集；
   [ride-hailing]打车服务（hail：挥手呼叫,hail a taxi; ride 骑车，乘车，Ann rides the bus to work.）

4. Potentially one of the most disruptive new technologies, as well as one of the most hyped, driverless cars have been at the centre of a race between big automakers and technology companies. But while a number of groups are testing the technology on the streets with back-up drivers behind the wheel, most believe the advent of full autonomy is at least two years away.
   [Potentially] 潜在的；可能的；（hidden; latent; lurking;)
   [disruptive] 颠覆性的；破坏的；分裂的
   [hyped] 兴奋的
   [advent]出现；到来；

5. The test, while limited to an unspecified area, is “not a one-time ride or a demo” but the start of “a new phase for Waymo and the history of this technology”, according to John Krafcik, head of Waymo, who announced the milestone at a tech conference in Lisbon yesterday. The company plans to expand it to the entire Phoenix region, he added, without giving a timeframe.
   [unspecified]未指明的；未详细说明的；specified特定的（designated; indicated ;)
   [timeframe]时间表;

6. Google shocked the auto industry when it first disclosed a rudimentary version of its driverless technology seven years ago this week, and it subsequently invested more than $1bn in autonomous vehicle research.
   [rudimentary]初步的（fundamental；elementary;)未充分发展的;
   [subsequently]随后；其后；后来；
   [invested] 投资；花费

7. Rivals concede it still has a technology lead, though sceptics question whether the artificial intelligence is good enough to respond to the many unforeseen events that could occur on the road.
   [Rivals] 竞争者；对手；竞争；与 匹敌；（compete;contend;vie;)
   rivalry:竞争；对抗；
   [concede] 承认；让步；
   [sceptics]持怀疑态度的人；

8. “I’m concerned they’re following the traditional Silicon Valley mode of: let’s put something out in beta and fix it as we go along,” said John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog, a US advocacy group.
   [beta] 测试

9. Waymo believes it is the first company to reach a standard known in the driverless car world as level 4, meaning its cars can drive under full autonomy in preset areas that have been carefully mapped and tested.

10. Uber, General Motors, Delphi, BMW and others have been conducting testing to reach level 4, but all of them still keep a human in the driver’s seat.
    [General Motors]通用汽车
    [Delphi] 德尔福公司原为通用汽车公司的零部件子公司。1999年5月28日，德尔福正式与通用汽车公司分离，成为一家完全独立的、公开在纽约证券交易所上市的公司。
    **[conduct]实施；管理；引导；表现；导电；（conduction：传导）

专业知识

[Waymo] is an autonomous car development company and subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc.Google had begun testing the self-driving car project in 2009.