14 DAY TRIAL // Google has chosen Ford to help it build its prototype self-driving car, but the company is also keeping its options open for other partners that want to get in on the deal, Yahoo Autos reports.
The deal, not yet publicly announced, will have Google provide the self-driving software while Ford will offer the manpower and factories where to build the actual cars.
Google has always said they are looking for a partner, with the company only recently using a custom-built car prototype for testing its self-driving technology, most of the time having it installed on other cars, like Lexus, Audi, and Toyota models. Since the beginning, Google has always been more interested in the self-driving AI, rather than the actual car.
Google offloaded the hardware building process to Ford
With this new deal, Google is outsourcing the hardware part to Ford, and will continue to improve its self-driving technology.
On the other side of the barricade, Ford was also working on its own self-driving car, and only last week presented one of the prototypes set to be tested on the streets of California in the near future.
Google, on the other hand, has been testing self-driving cars for years, in both California and Texas, having already logged in more than 1.3 million miles on the road. Google currently has 53 self-driving car prototypes.
The deal between Google and Ford makes sense because of four ties between the two companies: (1) the head of the Google self-driving car project, John Krafcik, worked for Ford for 14 years; (2) former Ford CEO Alan Mulally joined Google’s board last year; (3) Roush Industries, the company that builds the custom cars that Google now uses primarily for testing its self-driving software, is a Ford supplier; and (4) most of Google's employees in the self-driving car project also worked at Ford.
Google may take on Uber in the upcoming future
According to a Bloomberg report from last week, Google's self-driving car project will be incorporated as a self-standing division within Google's main company, Alphabet.
Inside sources claim that the self-driving car project will be used in the beginning as an unmanned taxi service for hauling users across large US towns.
The Google-Ford partnership is expected to be announced to the public at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, to be held in Las Vegas, USA.