Following it looked to be putting our self-driving dreams on hold (for a moment, at least), Yahoo parent company Alphabet has revealed its real programs for driverless cars. The project, previously one of the main endeavors of Google X, is getting spun out into their own independent company.
Called Waymo, the new company will continue development of the autonomous-driving tech that has been in the works at Google for the last eight years. According to a Channel post from the new company's CEO, John Krafcik, Google prototypes have put in roughly the same as 300 years of time driving on roads since 2009 -- data Waymo will build on as it continually move toward its goal of making fully autonomous cars a reality.
Waymo's first story was about completing their first fully, completely self-driven ride -- one where the passenger rode in the autonomous care with no test driver on board, which took place a year ago in Austin, Tx.
Waymo will continue to hone the self-driving technical by logging miles in Austin and the 3 other cities in which the project has recently been active: Mountain View, A bunch of states; Kirkland, Washington and Local area Phoenix, Arizona.
Like prior Alphabet spin-offs, Waymo's "graduation" to an independent company brings with it more freedom and pressure. The organization is free to make discounts and move forward as a stand-alone business, although it will have to justify itself financially, at least in the long run. A single of Waymo's explained goals is to "commercialize this technology and create products that can help millions of people, " according to press materials.
"Our next step as Waymo will be to let people use our vehicles to do everyday things like run errands, commute to work, or get properly home after having a night on the town, " wrote Krafcik.
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