Waymo Plans to Build and Sell Self-Driving Cars in Partnership with Traditional Automakers / Waymo

John Krafcik, head of Alphabet's self-driving car division, announced at a conference in San Francisco that it was being spun off into a separate company, Waymo, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Financial Times (FT) write.

Waymo's technology is expected to find applications in car rental services, freight transportation, logistics schemes, and public transportation. Waymo plans to manufacture and sell self-driving cars in partnership with traditional automakers. In May, Alphabet entered into a partnership with Fiat Chrysler - the companies are jointly developing self-driving minivans.

In October 2015, Google's self-driving car team drove its first self-driving car on the roads of Austin, Texas. According to Krafcik, the test demonstrated the maturity of the technology. Google's self-driving cars have now traveled more than 2 million miles in Austin, Mountain View, and Phoenix, carrying more than 10,000 passengers. The creation of Waymo is evidence that Alphabet believes that self-driving technology is mature enough to move from research to commercial production.

Work on robotic cars began in the Google X lab eight years ago, when Google was considered an upstart in the automotive market. Now this area has become fashionable, and Google has to fight for the new market with both traditional car manufacturers and IT players like Apple and Uber. In September, Uber launched a robotic taxi service in Pittsburgh. The work of these taxis is monitored by the company's employees sitting in the front seats. Recently, self-driving Uber taxis have been spotted on the streets of San Francisco. Thousands of specialists are working on automatic driving technologies at Apple. Mastering a new segment, General Motors bought the Cruise Automation startup, which is also engaged in driving automation. Ford Motor built its own research and development center in Silicon Valley.

You see 66% of this material Subscribe to finish reading the article and get full access to other closed materials

Waymo to develop Google's self-driving cars