Alphabet Inc’s dream project Google Self driving Car is now spin-off into a separate entity called Waymo. Google self-driving car project is a long running development to create technology for self-driving cars and now it has been rolled off into its own company called as Waymo.
The Google Self driving car project started seven years ago and now the long running project has turned off into its own organization Waymo. The officials of Google on Wednesday arranged a meeting in San Francisco and announced the news. Now Waymo is an independent company within the Alphabet Umbrella.
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Waymo CEO John Krafcik at a press meet told, “We are happy to get the project and now Waymo is an independent company. He also said that last year Waymo had conducted the first fully driverless ride on public roads in Austin, using a car with no steering wheels and no driver in everyday traffic.”
Steven Mahan, who is a blind friend of Waymo principal engineer Nathaniel Fairfield,had ridden the historical first drive in the self-driving car solo. Mahan previously rode the Google teat vehicles but he was always attended and escorted by the police. However, this time, he rode solo and the car transferred four-way stops, walkers, narrow streets and more public places in Austin.
At the press meet, Mahan shared his experience of self-driving car and called himself “rider 1”. However, the announcement symbols a critical step in the development of Google’s dream project now in the seventh year. It has been at the head of self-driving technology, but it’s now being challenged by other companies like Uber Technologies Inc, Apple Inc and other renowned car companies.
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Krafcik said, until now, the program has been part of secretive research unit Google X. We can visualize our self-driving technology being used in lots of different areas like in transportation, ride-share business, trucking, logistics, personal use vehicles and also looking to tie up with automakers.
However Waymo team is in full confidence that they were close to bringing this technology to a lot of people. Latest reports said that the updated spin-off will likely intemperance Google’s former vision for a completely independent system within a specially-built car. Meanwhile, Waymo is focusing on bringing the self-directed driving technology that Google has worked on to more predictable car models from existing makers, adding self-driving capabilities to cars that can also be driven manually.
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Many engineers and managers who are involved in Google self-driving car project is now working in some other companies or simply started their own self-driving schemes. Let’s wait and see how Waymo will do with this project.
