On Sunday night, Google announced the name of CEO, John Krafcik, who is going to handle its self driving car project. He will start his service in Google later this month. “This is a great opportunity to help Google develop the enormous potential of self driving cars.” Krafcik said in a statement. “This technology can saves thousands of lives, give millions of people greater mobility and free us from a lot of the things we find frustrating about driving today. I can’t wait to get started,” He added.
John Krafcik completed his graduation in mechanical engineering from Stanford. He was the one of the first engineers to work for New United Manufacturing Inc. or NUMMI, the Fremont Plant that was a unique binational joint operated by Toyota and General Motors. After that he worked as product developer for Ford for the duration of about 14 years. He was designated as the CEO of the Hyundai Motor America from 2008 to 2013.
John Krafcik is currently is the president of TrueCar, an online platform for automobile purchases. Chris Urmson, who served as director of self-driving project, will remain its technical director with the CEO Krafcik. Chris Urmson has even lead Google’s autonomous car program through years of experimentations.
Krafcik is the Google’s first major hire from the auto industry for the achievement of company’s grow in the field of auto industry. This summer, its self driving car hit the roads in California and received the permission to run tests in Texas.
This ambition is also putting Google against the other automaker companies, which all have existing autonomous car programs of their own. Recently, Toyota pledged a $150 million investment in the autonomous driving and other automaker companies are also nervous of Google’s self driving program, as well as its car software Android Auto.
Google also announced publicly that it intends to partner with manufacturers, not produce its own cars. Google said that while the project has its first CEO, that does not mean it will immediately become a separate business under Google’s newly formed parent company Alphabet. “This is about getting ourselves ready for the future, so we can bring this technology to its full potential. The project is not becoming an Alphabet company at this stage, though it’s certainly a good candidate to become one at some point in the future. The team is still a part of our X lab.” Google spokesperson said.
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