{"id":10220,"date":"2016-08-06T12:33:06","date_gmt":"2016-08-06T12:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=10220"},"modified":"2016-08-06T12:33:06","modified_gmt":"2016-08-06T12:33:06","slug":"google-executive-quits-self-driving-car-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/google-executive-quits-self-driving-car-project.html","title":{"rendered":"Google Executive quits Self-Driving Car Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google Executive quits Self-Driving Car Project<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Google Executive quits Self-Driving Car Project<\/span><\/strong> : Chris Urmson, who was instrumental in building Google’s self-driving car project, said on Friday he is leaving the team after seven and a half years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alphabet Inc’s Google had named Urmson chief technical officer of the project after it hired former Hyundai executive John Krafcik to be chief executive of the project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Urmson, who joined the project when it was launched and has been a public face of Google’s autonomous vehicle efforts, testified before a U.S. Senate panel on autonomous cars in March.<\/span><\/p>\n

Krafcik confirmed Urmson’s departure in a tweet on Friday afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Urmson, in a blog post late Friday, said he was “ready for a fresh challenge.” He said he was not sure what he would do next.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Going to take some time and get some perspective from outside of Google,” he wrote in a text message to Reuters.<\/span><\/p>\n

Urmson told Reuters earlier this year that self-driving cars are coming. “I\u2019ve gone from hoping this would happen to thinking it might happen to knowing it will happen,\u201d Urmson said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Google self-driving car project spokesman Johnny Luu confirmed Urmson’s departure and praised him.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Seven years ago, the idea that a car could drive itself wasn\u2019t much more than an idea. Chris has been a vital force for the project, helping the team move from a research phase to a point where this life-saving technology will soon become a reality,” Luu said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Google’s project has had other significant departures, even as it has hired dozens of new employees. Earlier this year, Anthony Levandowski, who was product manager for Google’s self-driving car program, left the project to co-found a startup with two other former Google employees.<\/span><\/p>\n

Google’s self-driving car project is expected to become a standalone company this year. In July, the project appointed its first general counsel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Google has logged more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous driving in testing in Texas, California, Arizona and Washington state. It has said it has no timetable for making self-driving vehicles available to the public.<\/span><\/p>\n

Officials have said Google is preparing to make its self-driving car unit a separate company. The program is now part of its X research laboratory unit.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The self-driving car project is in the middle of graduating from X and this is sort of a gradual process,” Astro Teller, who heads the X program, told NBC News in April.<\/span><\/p>\n

In May, Google and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said they had agreed to work together to build a fleet of nearly 100 self-driving minivans, the first time a Silicon Valley firm had teamed up with a traditional carmaker to develop an autonomous vehicle.<\/span><\/p>\n

In March, Reuters reported Google’s self-driving car team was expanding and hiring more people with automotive industry expertise, underscoring the company’s determination to move the division past the experimental stage.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish and Bernard Orr)<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/strong><\/span> : http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-google-urmson-idUSKCN10G2EH<\/span><\/p>\n

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