[RealCasually]

Living in Mountain View and driving with Google's self driving cars every day, I have to say I think they are quite a bit further than you give them credit and those conditions appear to be less limited than you are letting on here.

[datawrangler]

Something I've long wondered: howwell do they deal with inclement weather?

[agildehaus]

They do well in rain but snow remains a problem, not due to icy roads (at SXSW Chris Urmson said they do well on slick roads) but that the "better than GPS" LIDAR-based location tracking stops working when snow is on the ground.

The car simply cannot figure out where it is when there's a significant layer of snow on the ground because the reference maps stop looking like what the car is seeing.

https://youtu.be/Uj-rK8V-rik?t=46m22s