Fancy riding a self-riding Google car? That dream can be closer as Google's self-car project team is hiring executives to lead the future. Some of its first top-gun hires include Kevin Vosen, who is the team's chief legal officer. The team is led by John Krafcik, the former CEO and President of the South Korean carmaker Hyundai.
The team is reportedly preparing to graduate from 'X,' formerly known as Google X and dubbed as the 'moonshot factory.' The 'X' is a research company founded by Google to tackle highly-advanced projects, and it works somewhat in secret.
The according to the report of the website Recode, the timeline for this move is not yet clear. However, it reported that the team is looking for a head fr real estate, which means that the team is looking for a place to settle down after graduating from 'X.' As with many of 'X' projects, the team is currently situated in the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California. The move will enable the team to expand, both in team size and in geographical footprint. Currently, the team has 23 self-driving cars.
Google is not the only one developing a self-driving car. It is in the race against Apple, Inc., and carmakers Tesla, Volvo, and Volkswagen. Google reported that its self-driving car has traveled " a total of 170,000 miles; of those, 126,000 miles were driven autonomously (i.e. the car was fully in control)."
There are setbacks, as the car has been involved in 14 collisions, 13 of which the fault of other drivers. Some of the accidents have caused minor injuries to the Google employees; one such accident occurred when the occupied car was rear-ended by another car on July 2015. The latest accident was on February just this year when a self-driving car struck a bus after maneuvering to avoid sandbags blocked in its path. Google found that the problem was caused by a software crash.
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