Google scaling down driver-less car AV project : reports
13 Dec 2016
Alphabet, which had been among the pioneers in autonomous vehicles technology, may be scaling down its eight-year project.
The self-driving car team, dubbed Chauffeur internally, is set to be moved out of Google X's "moonshot" division and drop its plans for developing AV and instead focus on incorporating its sensors into traditional vehicles, tech media site The Information reported.
Meanwhile, Recode reported that Chris Urmson, who was CTO, Google Self-Driving Car and technical lead when he left the company after seven years, in April, was talking to a number of other top engineers in the space from companies like Uber, Apple and Tesla to join him.
According to commentators he could easily attract an A-team of techies who wanted to strike out on their own.
They say he had to yet raise any outside funding but in with his reputation ''people will throw piles of money at Chris because he is the real deal.''
