Get a glimpse of Google's Street View cars

Take a look at the cars responsible for capturing Google's Street View imagery.

Lexy Savvides Principal Video Producer

Lexy is an on-air presenter and award-winning producer who covers consumer tech, including the latest smartphones, wearables and emerging trends like assistive robotics. She's won two Gold Telly Awards for her video series Beta Test. Prior to her career at CNET, she was a magazine editor, radio announcer and DJ. Lexy is based in San Francisco.

Expertise Wearables, smartwatches, mobile phones, photography, health tech, assistive robotics Credentials

Webby Award honoree, 2x Gold Telly Award winner

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Lexy Savvides

Oct. 15, 2012 8:59 p.m. PT

Google Street View provides a convenient way to scope out locations and map routes without leaving the comfort of your chair. Take a look at the cars behind the mapping technology.

A fleet of Street View cars. Click for a larger version.
(Credit: Masrur Odinaev)

Masrur Odinaev, a senior mobile developer at Google, took this photo (on one of the Street View cameras, no less) and posted it to his Google+ page. It shows a fleet of Subaru Imprezas with the special Google camera rigs atop each. Odinaev estimates that there are over 250 cars in total in the Google Street View fleet.

According to photography blog PetaPixel, each car can capture 360-degree images from a height of 2.5 metres, with the imaging unit containing nine directional cameras.

Alongside the regular four-wheeled Street View machines, Google also employs a special backpack and three-wheeled trike to map areas that are inaccessible to cars.

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