Waymo LLC

What Waymo is

Waymo is a self-driving technology company that sits under Alphabet, the umbrella company that also houses Google.^[1] It describes itself as a self-driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to move around.^[2] The emphasis falls on the driving system rather than the car: Waymo says its focus is on bringing autonomous vehicles to more streets, not on manufacturing cars itself.^[1] The name is meant to stand for "a new way forward in mobility."^[2]

That division of labour matters for how the company works. A carmaker designs, builds and sells vehicles; Waymo's stated job is the software and the sensors that let a vehicle drive without a person at the wheel, and then getting that system onto public roads in as many places as possible.^[1]

From project to company

Waymo was created out of Google's self-driving car team, which had been working on the project for almost eight years when it was spun out in December 2016.^[1] John Krafcik, previously head of the self-driving car project, led the company at launch.^[1]

The spin-out gave the effort a name and a corporate identity of its own inside Alphabet, separate from the research work it grew out of.^[1][2]

The launch fleet and its record

At launch, the fleet consisted of a Lexus RX450h and the company's own small prototype vehicle, operating in four US states.^[1] Those vehicles had covered more than two million miles on real roads, plus over a billion miles of simulated driving.^[1] Simulated driving means the same software drives through computer-generated versions of roads and traffic, so engineers can test situations that are rare or dangerous in the real world.

Waymo also said its software and sensors had been in full control on a 2015 trip in Austin with a blind passenger.^[1] A ride of that kind is a way of showing what the system is meant to do: handle the driving task from start to finish, with a passenger who is not watching the road or able to take over.

A carmaker partnership

Earlier in 2016, Google had partnered with Fiat Chrysler to build minivans, with a fleet of 100 planned for the road.^[1] The arrangement pointed at how the technology could reach ordinary streets without Waymo building a car from scratch: a conventional vehicle platform from an established manufacturer, fitted with Waymo's self-driving hardware and software.

Where the technology was expected to go

Krafcik said the company saw ridesharing, trucking, transportation and personal-use vehicles as likely applications.^[1] These are different markets that share one requirement — a vehicle that can drive itself — so a single driving system could be sold into several of them. Ridesharing in particular pairs a self-driving system with a service that already dispatches cars to passengers.

At launch, then, Waymo presented itself less as a car company than as a supplier of the driver: a team that had spent nearly eight years on the problem, a fleet already driving in four states, a large simulated testing programme behind it, and a partner assembling vehicles for it.^[1] How far that model would spread onto public roads was left open.