Googles Autonomous Car Company

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What's going on?

Google has been working on a self-driving car for almost seven years, but on Tuesday it formally launched the project as a new company, called Waymo (tweet this).

What does this mean?

Waymo will exist as an independent company within the Alphabet group (remember, Google changed its corporate name to Alphabet last year). Its a sign that, after years of development, its almost time to launch the car to the public and to bring autonomous driving from experimentation to commercialization (i.e. to actually make money from selling self-driving cars).

Why should I care?

The bigger picture: Tech companies will partner with automakers to build autonomous vehicles.

According to a Bloomberg report, Waymo is partnering with Fiat Chrysler to launch a ride-sharing service that uses semi-self-driving Chrysler vans. Other partnerships, like between Uber and Volvo, show burgeoning collaboration between tech firms and traditional automakers. As Waymos CEO said, Were not in the business of making cars. Were in the business of making better drivers.



For markets: The autonomous car space is fast becoming hugely competitive.

Tech firms such as Apple and Uber (not to mention Tesla) as well as traditional automakers, like Volkswagen, are all working on autonomous driving. Its very much an evolution: self-driving features are already live in some cars, and this will progress into fully autonomous cars over the next five to ten years. As they become more normal, the competition is heating up to see who can become a leader in actually selling these cars.

Originally posted as part of the Finimize daily email.

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