Mountain View – Google announced a new CEO for their autonomous car project. John Krafcik, former Hyundai CEO, with a long history in automobile business, was hired by the company in order to light the way for the commercial aspects needed for creating the self-driving car.
Google has been working hard on getting the autonomous car out of the testing trials and putting it on real roads, and now it seems they are ready to make some adjustments to achieve their futuristic dream. “We’re adding an outstanding business leader in John Krafcik. John’s combination of technical expertise and auto industry experience will be particularly valuable as we collaborate with many different partners to achieve our goal of transforming mobility for millions of people.” said Google in an emailed statement, as reported by Forbes.
John Krafcik, the new main head of the project, previously worked as CEO and president at Hyundai Motor Company, for a period of ten years. Before that, he experienced fourteen years at FORD. To get closer in the years, John worked as an exec at TrueCar, Inc., which is an automotive pricing and information website for new and used car buyers and dealers. Thus, if someone knows something about the car industry, Krafcik must be the right man.
Krafcik will start performing his new CEO role at the end of the month. He will be based at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. Google expects that Krafcik, serves as a push regarding to the commercial aspects of the technological project. The car industry expert has a large agenda with useful contacts, and a vision full of knowledge.
Yes, true: I'm joining the Google Self-Driving Car project in late September.
— John Krafcik (@johnkrafcik) September 14, 2015
“John’s combination of technical expertise and auto industry experience will be particularly valuable as we collaborate with many different partners to achieve our goal of transforming mobility for millions of people.” said Kara Berman, a spokeswoman from Google.
Google’s aims
Earlier this year, Google confirmed that his small, pod-like car invention, was ready for testing on public roads. The company has stated that after millions of miles of trials, the vehicle fitted with its autonomous car technology has not caused any accident. Google already have some handful prototypes that have traveled public roads in California and Texas. Now, the company seems to want to take the autonomous cars, to a daily reality in humans life
Self-driving cars could save 1000s of lives, give people greater mobility & free us from things we find frustrating about driving today.
— John Krafcik (@johnkrafcik) September 14, 2015
Google’s goal, is to create a fully self-driving vehicle that simplifies the life of others. The company wants to build a car that abide orders from its owner, without needing your presence, also to prevent car-humans accidents and save – as Krafcik said – “1000s of lives”. Google is based on the premise that human error is the main cause of accidents, so the benefits of the technology are complete obvious.
It is not known yet which scenario will be covered by Google, all we know for sure is they are willing to make some partnerships with different automobile companies.
Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne told Automotive News that “Krafcik’s background shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign that Google intends to become a manufacturer of self-driving cars. We’re not going to make cars ourselves. We know what we’re good at, and we’ll partner with many different companies to bring this technology into the world safely.”
Source: TechCrunch