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For years, Google has travelled around its home base, near San Francisco, California to test out its autonomous vehicles. Now, it's been confirmed that they've moved these practices for now to Austin, Texas in order to see how it reacts to various driving environments, traffic patterns and road conditions.

The vehicle being used is a Lexus RX 450h SUV prototype, that's been fitted with numerous sensors and a plethora of software technology. It will make its way around the outskirts of downtown Austin (a city known for its praise of innovation and change), without a driver steering the way. Instead, two “safety drivers” will be in each autonomous SUV to analyze how each performs and for precautionary measures.

So far in the testing process, Google has logged over 1.6-million kilometres since 2009, and can detect hundreds of different activities and objects that surround the vehicle.

Google still believes that its autonomous fleet of vehicles should be ready by 2020, but wish to work with other automakers to build the vehicle, as opposed to creating its own.