Google unmanned cars got a legal entity: Waymo

The prototype of an unmanned waymo car

The project of creating robots Google went the seventh year, it has long outgrown the experimental stage. This is a very promising business. Just a few days ago, the first US state authorized the sale of serial unmanned vehicles and their commercial operation , including on-call unmanned taxi mode.

It's time to move from research and testing to commercial exploitation, especially since Alphabet’s CFO has recently stung funding for Google research projects . Everything must be profitable. Alphabet Corporation announced yesterday that the project of unmanned vehicles in a separate independent company. The company was named Waymo .

According to experts, the formation of a separate legal entity for the project of unmanned vehicles indicates the owners' desire to finally monetize their valuable scientific research. Ways of monetization can be different, for example, the licensing of intellectual property. But it’s very likely that Google (more precisely, Waymo) came close to releasing commercial robots.
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In this area, Waymo will have to face tough competition from several companies that are also developing in the field of unmanned vehicles and, in particular, intend to organize unmanned taxi stations in major US cities. Of course, first of all these are Tesla Motors and Uber companies. Those are already preparing for competition among themselves. So, in the license agreement for the full autopilot Tesla explicitly states that the owner undertakes not to send his autopilot to work in a competitor's park, and use only in the unmanned network Tesla Networks. In September 2016, Uber launched the first tests of unmanned taxi in Pittsburgh .


Uber unmanned vehicle display with a machine vision monitor during tests in Pittsburgh, September 12, 2016. Photo: Jeff Swensen / The New York Times

Another potential competitor is Apple, which also is developing an unmanned vehicle, having thrown hundreds of engineers on this project .

“[Formation of a separate legal entity] is an indication of the maturity of our technology, ” said the new company's executive director, John Krafchik, at a press conference in San Francisco yesterday. “We can imagine that our unmanned technology is used in all areas ... [This step demonstrates] confidence that we are close to bringing this [technology] to the mass market. We have reached a kind of inflection point. ”

John Krafchik joined the company in August 2015, before that he was the top manager of Hyundai Motor.

Until now, the unmanned vehicles program has been a relative secret research unit inside Google X. Now everything will change. It's time for commercial work. The Executive Director promised “soon” to determine the dates when the technology will be ready to enter the mass market. He stressed several times that the company is not interested in producing cars, but only in developing technologies for the autopilot. Possible use of autopilot can be sharing (ride-sharing), passenger trucking, trucking, transport, logistics, and use for personal use. Partners will assist in the production of Waymo machines. The first of these was the company Fiat Chrysler, with which in May 2016, an agreement was signed to equip the first hundred Fiat Chrysler minivans with autopilot.

The name Waymo is an abbreviation for the phrase "A new way forward in mobility," said Krafchik.


Since 2009, Google / Alphabet cars drove 3.7 million km in unmanned mode on public roads and test sites in California, Arizona, Texas and Washington, as well as more than 1.6 billion km in computer simulation mode (in 2016). Now running cars in the most difficult scenarios, which may encounter roboavtomobil in real road conditions. About 60 Google cars (now Waymo cars) are testing on public roads.



Last year, Google expanded its drone development program, increased its engineering staff, and doubled the number of test centers for testing cars in the US from two to four. For the development of a monetization plan in August 2016, Airbnb former head Shaun Stewart was invited to work as a director. A month earlier, the company introduced the position of legal director and for the first time appointed a chief lawyer for this project. Dmitry Dolgov , a 2000 graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, became Director of Technology at Waymo.

So, step by step, we are getting closer to the future, when a person behind the wheel of a car will look archaic, causing only fear among others. Now road accidents claim more lives than all wars and terrorism. The damage to the economy from road accidents is comparable to total spending on health care . Every year about 1.4 million people die in traffic accidents.