One hour of real test driving = one edge case. One hour in Waymax = 10,000 edge cases — kids running, mattress falling, black ice. That’s why Waymo simulates 10M miles/day.
CARLA vs Waymax
CARLA is open-source Unreal-based with photoreal weather. Waymax (Waymo) is JAX-accelerated, replaying real logs with controllable agents. Both feed RL loops where the AI learns from crashes that would be illegal in reality.
Digital Twins
Cities like Singapore and Phoenix have centimeter digital twins. Before a new software deploys, it must pass 60k simulated scenarios derived from that twin — including each historic crash site.