2020 vision: Google wants to partner with car makers on self driving tech
Google Inc. is reported to be in talks with a range of major car manufacturers to bring its self-driving car technology to the mainstream by 2020.
Automakers in talks with Google include General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp, Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG.
“We’d be remiss not to talk to … the biggest auto manufacturers. They’ve got a lot to offer,” Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving car project, told Reuters in an interview.
“For us to jump in and say that we can do this better, that’s arrogant.”
Google still has not determined whether it will license its self-driving systems and software to third parties or build cars itself, Urmson implied.
Google’s self driving car project made headlines recently with the tech giant revelling its own built from scratch vehicle in December.
The project dates back to Stanford and Google X around 2005, and has faced a large array of legal issues, including liability in the event of accident, and the legality of not having a human in charge of a vehicle. Self driving cars are, at the time of writing, only legal in California, Nevada, Florida, Michigan and Washington D.C., and even in those cases a human operator has to be behind the wheel and able to take control at all times.
The move to partner with major automakers is a logical one; while you could describe the kawaii themed Google built car as cute, the technology will only become mainstream if it’s adopted by existing manufacturers.
Check back to SiliconANGLE in 2020 to see if it actually comes to fruition.
Image credit: Google Inc.
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