NEW YORK: Internet search company Google has begun discussions with most of the world’s top car makers and parts suppliers to speed up efforts to bring self-driving cars to market by 2020.
“We’d be remiss not to talk to … the biggest auto makers. They’ve got a lot to offer,” said Chris Urmson, director of Google’s self-driving car project.
The manufacturers include General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Daimler and Volkswagen.
“For us to jump in and say that we can do this better, that’s arrogant,” Urmson said. But Google has not yet decided if it will build its own self-driving vehicles or function more as a provider of systems and software to established manufacturers.
Google’s current self-driving prototype cars are being built in Detroit by engineering company Roush.
GM’s chief technology officer, Jon Lauckner, confirmed this week that GM was open to working with Google on self-driving cars.
Urmson’s expectation that the first fully autonomous vehicles will be production-ready within five years mirrors the view expressed a day earlier by another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Elon Musk, the South African chief executive of Tesla Motors.
Musk, who spoke on Tuesday at the Automotive News World Congress conference, said he thinks a lack of US regulations covering self-driving cars might delay their introduction until 2022 or 2023.
Urmson, however, said his Google colleagues “don’t see any particular regulatory hurdles”.
Google will shortly deploy a test fleet of fully functioning prototypes of its pod-like self-driving car, which dispenses with such familiar parts as steering wheel, brakes and accelerator pedal.
While each of the Google prototypes will have a “test driver” on board, the cars have no provision for human intervention in steering or braking.
Urmson suggested the no-frills look of the Google prototypes, a far cry from the opulent appearance of the self-driving F015 concept vehicle unveiled last week by Mercedes, does not necessarily reflect the final design for production.
He described the Google prototype as “a practical, near-term testing platform” that will evolve over time.
“Airliners today don’t look like the Wright brothers’ flyer” of 100 years ago, he said.
Urmson said self-driving cars represent a “transformative” moment in the evolution of transportation, an opportunity to extend motoring to blind, elderly and disabled persons who otherwise could not drive.
“You’re really changing the relationship you have with transportation. You’re changing what it means to get around.”
