Every once in awhile, someone mentions the name Google Car. It’s not hard to see why. Google Car is one of the first major iterations of a tangible futuristic vision that is the essence of Silicon Valley. While Google certainly isn’t the first to come up with the idea of a self-driving car, it was among the first to entirely utilize the idea using modern technology and turn it into a quantifiable product. The tech titan has a countless number of projects in different industries. Therefore, creating an autonomous car actually isn’t all that far away from the company that’s still primarily known as a search engine.
Google Car History
The history of the Google Car goes back to the very ending of the previous decade when the company first launched it under the moniker “Google self-driving car project” in 2009. The preliminary project consisted of Toyota Prius models retrofitted with Google’s experimental driverless technology. The company self-imposed a challenge – to drive fully autonomously over ten uninterrupted 100-mile routes. It took no more than a couple of months to crush that challenge and move further with the project and reach its ultimate goal – to construct an autonomous vehicle by 2020.
In 2011, Google replenished its fleet of autonomous cars by adding a Lexus RX450h SUV model to the fold. The next year marked a significant step forward towards the ultimate goal. Google’s tech-transformed Prius was licensed by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in May 2012, effectively marking the first time ever a license was issued in the United States for a self-driving vehicle.
Google reached a milestone in May 2014, when it revealed its own prototype of a fully autonomous vehicle. The prototype had rather unusual features (or to be precise, lacked) such as no steering wheel and no gas or brake pedals. It only had a button to turn it on with the maximum speed capped at 25 mph. By the end of the year, the prototype was fully functional with successful testing throughout 2015.
Another milestone happened in February 2016, albeit not a positive one. Google Car caused an accident by hitting a bus while trying to avoid obstacles blocking its path. Google accepted the responsibility for the crash, characterizing it as a normal, every-day occurrence happening between human drivers. The date was important due to the fact that the Google Car was the guilty side for the first time. There were 14 previous instances of accidents including Google’s self-driving car. However, every one of those occurred when the vehicles were being manually driven or when it was the fault of another vehicle’s driver.
Google Car Is Now Waymo
Google Car is now called Waymo (a derivative of the company’s slogan “a new way forward in mobility”), operating independently under Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The transition allows Google to further advance its plans to be a hardware company, while still retaining its roots. Still, Waymo will be a self-driving technology company first and foremost, supplementing automakers with its technology.
For that matter, it has recently expanded its partnership with Fiat Chrysler. The Detroit automaker supplied 100 Pacifica Hybrid minivans, incorporated with Waymo’s technology for testing. This goes with the company’s efforts to create fleets of self-driving cars, moving along the lines of an autonomous taxi service, public transit systems, and other transportation.
Google Car Technology
The self-driving technology consists of GPS (Global Positioning System), various sensors and cameras, radar and lidar systems. All of the components serve different functions to ensure the smooth sailing of the vehicle. GPS is used for navigation, while sensors and cameras detect objects on all four sides of the vehicle, as well as inform the vehicle about other road and weather conditions. Special consideration is given to pedestrians and cyclists, utilizing existing sensors and software to predict their behavior, but also all of the surroundings. Vehicles are pre-set to drive defensively, which means they try to stay out of blind spots and away from large vehicles.
As with any self-reliant technology, there are certain limitations that slow down the progress of the whole concept. For instance, the vehicle cannot perceive a police officer signaling the vehicle to make a stop. It also can’t make a difference between harmless objects such as trash, which ultimately causes the vehicle to change direction. Due to its reliance on pre-programmed data, self-driving cars are unable to follow traffic lights placed temporarily in case of imminent road work. There are many other examples that highlight the various limitations of the driverless technology.
It is also quite expensive, overall tripling or quadrupling the price compared to a standard, factory-manufactured car. However, Waymo is taking matters into its own hands. The company recently slashed the cost of a lidar system by a whopping 90 percent through its own production. Lidar, a sensing method that combines light in a form of a laser and a radar to measure distances, is the most expensive part of the manufacturing process. John Krafcik, Waymo CEO noted that a single lidar unit cost $75,000 a few years ago. This prompted the company to keep the complete production in-house, producing an entire suite of sensors all by itself.
The Future Of The Google Car
Since its initial launch in 2009, the Google Car passed the two million mile mark in public road testing. As Google likes to point out, it is equivalent to about 300 years of human driving. Additionally, the self-driving vehicle drove one billion simulated miles during the past year alone. Currently, about 24 vehicles equipped with self-driving technology, along with 34 Waymo prototypes, traverse the roads daily, raking up to 26,000 miles a week.
While all those statistics look mighty fine and encouraging, Google hasn’t quite translated its autonomous car into a market-ready product. After almost eight years of testing, the Google Car/Waymo still isn’t near commercial availability. There are many reasons why that hasn’t happened, not counting the external factors like road infrastructure and legal regulations. Many see Larry Page, Google co-founder and Alphabet CEO as the primary reason. Page’s vision of Waymo significantly differs from that of the whole project. He insists on a fully autonomous car, as opposed to partial autonomy that’s currently present.
The company has changed much of its self-driving car plans in order to bring the technology to market quicker. The focus is on supplying other companies with its proprietary self-driving technology. Plans for physically manufacturing its own self-driving car will have to take a backseat for the time being.
Closing words
It will be interesting to see how things pan out in the next year or two. Waymo’s move to create its own hardware is a step forward to its marketability. It’s also in line with the company’s focus on being a tech company, not an automaker. However, its entrance on the on-demand car market means it already lagging behind its rivals. Ride-hailing companies like Uber are already effectively performing trials of their self-driving taxis. Car manufacturers like BMW, Audi, and Volvo, among many others, will launch public demonstrations of their autonomous vehicles this year. Waymo has yet to announced similar plans, but it has taken the right steps towards its goal – making roads safer, freeing up people’s time, and improve mobility for everyone.