Commuting may never be the same again in Nevada, the US state that is home to Las Vegas, legalised gambling and huge amounts of desert. Besides gambling, it is now legal there to have a self-driven car – providing it matches up to the specification achieved by Google's autonomous models. The first fully licensed self-driven car – a modified Toyota Prius – won a special permit on Tuesday, the first of three applied for by Google, which allows it to be used on the state's roads, including the famous Las Vegas strip. Autonomous vehicles are the "car of the future," said Bruce Breslow, the director of Nevada's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), in a statement. The state also has plans to eventually license autonomous vehicles owned by members of the public, the DMV said.

Nevada claims to be the first state in the nation to approve rules for testing driverless vehicles on the state roadways. The Legislative Commission of the state's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) approved regulations in February that will pave the way for companies to test "autonomous vehicles" and set the stage for Nevada motorists to operate driverless cars and trucks. DMV Director Bruce Breslow said Nevada is the first in the U.S. to adopt such legislation, and that an application package for companies that want to test their autonomous vehicles is available. The announcement was made just months after Nevada passed a law requiring the DMV to adopt regulations that would authorize the use of autonomous vehicles on the state's highways. The law, passed in July 2011, defines an autonomous vehicle as "a motor vehicle that uses artificial intelligence, sensors and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself without the active intervention of a human operator."

Regulations governing Google's experimental self-driving cars will come into effect on California's roads starting 16 September. They have driven more than 1 million kilometers since the company started secretly developing them in 2009, but they have been tested only once by a government body on open roads--by Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) officials in May 2012. IEEE Spectrum has now obtained the driving log of this test, and e-mails referring to it, under Freedom of Information legislation. Some of this information is not new. For example, Nevada officials shared that the Google's autonomous Toyota Prius passed the test almost immediately.