It isn't even that big a number. People with lots of assets carry that much or more liability insurance and they aren't paying enormous amounts for it.

I guess it makes sense when only large businesses are the ones to own these automobiles. It puts individual ownership out of reach.

Well its not about individual ownership its about businesses testing commercial self driving cars right?

Seems to me that a company is going to need to sink many millions in to design, build, and test a truly road safe self driving car no? Even considering it as a hardware and software mod to an existing model.

>Businesses wishing to test their self-driving cars have to buy a million dollar bond from the state.

It's not for individual owners.

Individual ownership of driverless cars is out of reach, and always has been. This pilot program brings it a step closer, despite clearly just a test (e.g. requires two drivers in the car)

How is a robot caused pile-up any different from a human caused pile-up? Do human Nevada drivers have to carry a million dollar bond?

Human drivers are not a new technology being field tested in a new and challenging environment.

Drivers in most U.S. states (I can only speak for VT, PA, and MA) are required to carry liability insurance in order to drive legally. The amount varies.

Robot drivers are a new and unproved technology. After not too many years I'd expect that they will cause way fewer accidents per mile driven than human drivers.

Add that there is not a whole lot of case law on robot driven vehicles to understand how far the accident will go legally (unknown expense for an unknown number of parties)