Following reports from Tuesday morning, Google and Fiat Chrysler just confirmed that they are teaming up to bring self-driving car tech in consumer cars closer to reality.
Fiat Chrysler will be providing about 100 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans for Google to modify its autonomous car tech onto and use for testing purposes.
The addition of nearly 100 Pacifica Hybrids will more than double Google's already-existing autonomous car test fleet. Google anticipates that it'll be able to begin rolling out these Pacifica test vehicles by the end of 2016.
This partnership will be the first time Google has teamed up with automaker to build its test vehicles.
Computers and sensors will be added to the Pacificas by Google to make the full self-driving systems fully functional.
Google said in a press release that the fact that the Pacifica is a larger vehicle is helpful because it gives them "an opportunity to test a larger vehicle that could be easier for passengers to enter and exit, particularly with features like hands-free sliding doors."
So far, Google has been able to dial in around 1.4 million miles on its self-driving car fleet. With its fleet soon to be more than doubled, that number will likely rise very quickly.
On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.
