Singapore just became the first country to have self-driving taxis

Singapore just became the first country to actually implement self-driving taxis on the road for public use.

So far, nuTonomy – the company behind the cars and the app that hails them – has implanted six cars that can autonomously pick up passengers and deliver them to destinations, making them the first company to offer such technology to the public.

“We face constraints in land and manpower,” Singapore’s permanent secretary for transport, Pang Kin Keong, told the Associated Press.

“We want to take advantage of self-driving technology to overcome such constraints, and in particular to introduce new mobility concepts which could bring about transformational improvements to public transport in Singapore.”

While the news is definitely cool, there are some caveats, because the system is still in its testing phase. The cars – Mitsubishi i-Mievs and Renault Zoes – only traverse a 2.5-square-mile (6.5-square-kilometre) region of Singapore known as One-North, and there are special drop-off and pick-up zones that passengers must deal with.