After almost eight years on the road with more than two million miles of drive testing, Google announced to back off its plans to build in-house self-driving cars. The project, aimed at developing cars without steering wheels or pedals, may have been suspended amid claims of successful testing on US roads, including California, Arizona, Texas, and Washington since 2009.
But hours after the news broke out that the software giant was backing off from its in-house car project, Google announced a partnership with car builder Fiat Chrysler on self-driving cars. The cooperation requires Fiat Chrysler to build the car while Google provides the hardware and software technology. The project spins off its own company called Waymo, separating the Google's Alphabet Inc., a term decrypted from "A way of moving forward."
According to a Bloomberg report, the partnership will speed up the development of self-driving cars, which will be ready for launch towards the end of 2017. This will also give Google an edge in the stiff competition of self-driving car development which includes Volvo's project in Sweden, Uber Technologies in Pittsburgh, nuTonomy in Singapore, and Tesla Motors Inc.
Aside from increasing the pace of the project, this cooperation will also give fresh life to Google's self-driving undertaking after it lost several top executives this year due to the project's delay. Waymo has been in autonomous vehicle technology for more than six years now.
"We will continue to have access to infrastructure and resources Alphabet provides. But in this new world as Waymo we also have this feeling like we are a venture-backed startup," said Waymo's first CEO John Krafcik.
It was not clear whether the self-driving car project will carry the same mantra as Google Car, launching it as Uber and Lyft competitors, and not selling the cars direct to consumers.Watch the preview of Waymo car here: