Google's driverless cars have had a lot of PR recently, with some pretty decent coverage of how they actually work.
The cars don't follow predetermined routes. At present they do learn routes, but not using Google Street View data. Actually, the opposite is true, the intention is for the diver-less cars to generate 3d data for street view.
According to this blog post, the map data is pretty important.
> Two things seem particularly interesting about Google's approach. First, [Google's driverless car] relies on very detailed maps of the roads and terrain, something that Urmson said is essential to determine accurately where the car is. Using GPS-based techniques alone, he said, the location could be off by several meters.
The cars don't follow predetermined routes. At present they do learn routes, but not using Google Street View data. Actually, the opposite is true, the intention is for the diver-less cars to generate 3d data for street view.