Google is now taking out their self-driving car project from X and putting it in a new company. Waymo will be the face and brains behind the project but they will still be under the Alphabet corporate umbrella.
It has been more than eight years since Google began its journey in making their self-driving car. The search engine giant has already logged over 2 million miles of practice runs with the autonomous mobile but the product itself is not yet ready.
Google's self-driving car project transitioning into the new Waymo company could mean that they are actually close to a final version of their autonomous mobile. It would prove to be a good move considering that Tesla, General Motors, Ford and Baidu have already plans to release a self-driving car soon.
Waymo is now a standalone company that handles the self-driving car project but they are still under Alphabet, Wired reported. The chief executive officer of the said company is John Krafcik who also plays a large role in the autonomous mobile project.
Google wants their self-driving cars to help minimize the number of accidents on the road and to help disabled people to travel comfortably. It makes sense in theory as most of the accidents on the road are caused by human error and rarely because of something mechanical failing.
Krafcik wrote in a Medium post that their self-driving car can already handle difficult tasks. It can detect and respond to emergency vehicles as well as stop accordingly when in four-way intersections.
An actual release date for the Waymo self-driving car has not been announced. Krafcik also wrote that there is a lot more work to do but he did not specify if they are still far from the goal. Google was one of the first to say that self-driving cars are possible and it would not be appropriate for someone else to beat them to the finish line.
Watch how a blind man was able to travel thanks to the Google self-driving car: