Google aims to join forces with automakers
• The CEO of Google Inc.’ s self- driving car project acknowledged Tuesday that the company is looking to partner with automakers, but refused to go into detail as rumours continue to swirl about a tie- up between Google and Ford Motor Co.
“No one goes this alone. We are going to need a lot of help and in the next stages of our project we’re going to be partnering more and more and more for sure, you can count on it,” John Krafcik said in a speech at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit.
“I don’t have anything specific to say today, just to make that clear,” he added with a laugh.
Last month, industry publication Automotive News reported that Ford is in talks with Google to build the next generation of self- driving cars under contract, citing an unnamed source.
It was thought that Ford would make an announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week or at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week, but so far nothing has materialized.
Krafcik made it clear that Google will eventually need help from an established automaker to bring its technology to market.
“Automakers have the talent and the track record of producing cars at scale, and as our technology progresses, we hope to work with many of you guys,” he said.
A personification of the growing collaboration and competition between Detroit and Silicon Valley, Krafcik, the former head of Hyundai Motors America, was hired by Google in September to oversee its self- driving car project.
Despite his auto- industry background, Krafcik contradicted many of his peers Tuesday when he said “full autonomy” is necessary to make cars as safe as possible. Earlier in the day, both Don Walker, the CEO of Magna International Inc., and James Lentz, the CEO of Toyota North America, said fully self- driving cars are a long way off and incremental progress is the more likely scenario.
But Krafcik disagreed, saying cars that are able to do most of the driving themselves but still need a human paying attention at the wheel are a dangerous proposition.
“It’s sort of the fundamental paradox of ( partially autonomous) systems: as they get better and better and better, humans are more likely to not pay attention in that driver’s seat, but we need them to take over at any time,” he said.
“If we need to rely on the driver in any way, the system will never be as robust as it needs to be.”
Google has been working on self-driving technology for seven years, covering a total of 1.3 million miles with its test cars, and Krafcik said it’s now able to handle “the majority of usual as well as unusual situations,” including the completely unexpected.
He gave the real- life example of a Google test car that encountered a woman in an electric wheelchair, holding a broom and chasing a duck in circles in the middle of the road.
“You literally could never make that stuff up, and honestly there was no single line of code in our massive algorithm that in any way specifically predicted that event,” he said.
“But our car still knew what to do. It understood that this was a situation where i t needed to slow down, observe the situation, wait until the situation was clear and then continue on its journey.”