Short answer: to prove that it could. We may still be quite a bit far away from our flying cars but it does look as if we are at the dawn of the age of the self-driving car. This was made no more apparent than when a self-driving car named Roadrunner, outfitted by Delphi, drove all the way from San Francisco to New York City. 3,400 miles in all. This is the first time a cross country trip of this kind had been completed by a self-driving car and the journey took nine days.

Delphi is one of the world’s largest suppliers of various technologies for the automotive market. And still one of the most remarkable things about their self-driving car feat is that it wasn’t done by Google or any of the major car companies. Not to sell Delphi short of course. They’re a company that has been around forever and have always been finding new ways to innovate. But a major reason why Delphi did this, besides the publicity and collection of real world data, was to show just how viable a self-driving car is. All of these technologies are already available and in the model they put together Delphi even outfitted the car so the cameras and sensors fit into the design seamlessly.

Self-driving cars have come a long way in recent years and it really seems like we’re on the verge of seeing them integrated into everyday life. If you’d like to learn about Delphi and the state of the self-driving car industry visit Wired.com. You can also see Roadrunner in action on Delphi’s own site here.