Google wants partners for connected cars

Google wants partners for connected cars

Google has been at the forefront of automated car development for some time now, pushing the envelope for vehicles that can drive themselves all by their lonesome, as well as better mapping and navigation technologies. However, while it might have managed to turn a few Lexus vehicles into self driving cars and has even created some of its own pod car prototypes, there’s only so much it wants to compete with the auto industry. In-reality, it wants to partner up with a company with more experience in the car-making game.

“We don’t particularly want to become a car maker,” Chris Urmson, Director of Google’s self-driving car project said while speaking to The Wall Street Journal. “We are talking with and looking for partners.” It’s not clear at this point which car maker(s) Google wants to work with, or more interestingly perhaps, when it made the decision to begin talking with other car makers. Perhaps it was when Baidu, the Chinese search equivalent of Google, announced that it had teamed up with BMW to develop a piloted car technology moving forward.

Perhaps one of Google’s furture partners will emerge in the upcoming tests of automated vehicles in the UK next year. There are plans for different firms to work with univeristies and tech research labs to develop new piloted vehicle tech as well as run tests on how it works with local drivers, what local pedestrians think of it and how it will affect licensing and insurance issues.

Read more : https://www.telematics.com/google-wants-partners-for-connected-cars/