All the signs right now point to Google's self-driving cars being a fleet, not personal vehicles. A few points: * Google has expertise in "big data" and algor

All the signs right now point to Google's self-driving cars being a fleet, not personal vehicles. A few points: * Google has expertise in "big data" and algorithms: running a fleet would fit their expertise. * On the other hand, Google has no expertise in designing or marketing pretty cars. They don't have any dealership or repair network. To release a personal vehicle, they'd have to team up with a car company (and that partnership would have to be in place by now given Google's aggressive timeline). * A fleet lets Google control the deployment carefully. Nobody is going to buy a self-driving car that only works in Mountain View. (Or, worse, they would buy the car, and then complain loudly.) But with a fleet, Google can start on a corporate campus, expand to Stanford, say, then Mountain View, etc. No worries about driving in the snow. No worries about self-driving cars getting in well-publicized accidents after an owner ignored the maintenance schedule.