Ten years ago, people imagined the future with flying cars, but Google brought something even better, a self-driving car. With this car, people can experience the future brought. The automakers which developed the car are within the Alphabet umbrella with John Krafcik as chief executive of the new company.
Forbes reported John Krafcik was veteran automotive executive at Ford and Hyundai Motor’s for a decade and was recruited in September 2015 to work on one of Google’s X Tech project. Together with Chris Urmson who is a robotics scientist who lede the Google program for six years when he started planning his own self-driving technology company. This car has no steering wheel, gas and no brake pedals, and in October 2015 the car rode a blind man, Steve Mahan to his doctor’s appointment. Google, who was the leader in artificial intelligence for so long now has a competitor, Uber. This year Otto, who is a robot-tracking tech developer set a goal of getting autonomous vehicles into its fleet as soon as possible. While Tesla is equipping its electric vehicles with sensors and computing power to control driving functions. Waymo has 100 hybrid Chrysler minivans with sensors that will join 60 prototype autonomous vehicles tested in Silicon Valley.
According to Wired, Waymo’s mission is to save people, to save drivers as well as passengers. A lot of automobile companies announced they are working aggressively to make self-driving cars. Approximately, the self-driving cars will appear on the market between 2017 to 2021. A lot of people abandoned the project because of some disagreement including Chris Urmson who was unhappy with Krafick’s leadership.
As Business Insider reported, Google’s plan is not to make better cars, but to make better drivers. Car manufacturing is an expensive business which requires giant facilities and complex supplies in which Google has no experience. The first Google car was built in 2014 without a steering wheel and brake pedals named “Koala” car.
