Waymo
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Autonomous cars |
| Predecessor | Google Self-Driving Car Project |
| Founded | December 13, 2016 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, United States |
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Key people
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John Krafcik (CEO) Kevin Vosen (CLO) |
| Parent |
Google Inc (2009-2016) Alphabet Inc. (2016–present) |
| Website | waymo |
John Krafcik (CEO)
Waymo, previously known as the Google self-driving car project, is an autonomous car developer and an independent company under Alphabet Inc. The company began in 2009 as a project under Google.
In December 2016, Google transitioned the project into a new company called Waymo, housed under Google’s parent company Alphabet. Alphabet describes Waymo as “a self-driving tech company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around.” The new company, which will be headed by long-time automotive executive John Krafcik, plans to make self-driving cars available to the public in 2020.
The project was formerly led by Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View. Thrun's team at Stanford created the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge and its US$2 million prize from the United States Department of Defense. The team developing the system consisted of 15 engineers working for Google, including Chris Urmson, Mike Montemerlo, and Anthony Levandowski who had worked on the DARPA Grand and Urban Challenges.
In October 2010, an attorney for the California Department of Motor Vehicles raised concerns that "[t]he technology is ahead of the law in many areas," citing state laws that "all presume to have a human being operating the vehicle".
According to a May 2011 article in The New York Times, policy makers and regulators have argued that new laws will be required if driverless vehicles are to become a reality because "the technology is now advancing so quickly that it is in danger of outstripping existing law, some of which dates back to the era of horse-drawn carriages".
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Wikipedia