Waymo Self-Driving Car Company Sets Deal With Fiat Chrysler to Buy Vans

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 3:59AM EST · Published Jan 30, 5:17AM EST

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Waymo Self-Driving Car Company Sets Deal With Fiat Chrysler to Buy Vans — © courtesy of FCA US LLC

Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) self-driving car company Waymo is about to get way bigger. It has set a deal to buy several thousand Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE: FCAU) minivans. The Pacifica is one of the automakers most successful models. Waymo has tested it before. The primary challenge the alliance faces is that much of the public still worries about self-driving technology.

While neither company will say how many vans will be involved, several thousand would sharply increase Waymo’s fleet. Neither company would say whether the Pacificas will be used for a large test or will be sold to a small number of people to use on closed roads. The Waymo technology has not been approved for driving on open roads.

Self-driving technology is still in its infancy. A number of small tech companies and very large car companies are rushing to test and deploy self-driving cars. However, it may take years before they are sophisticated enough to operate on any and every road in the United States. Several pieces of research, including extensive ones from Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) and AlixPartners, show the acceptance of self-driving cars is limited. Ironically, this is because a number of people do not think they are safe. Self-driving car companies maintain the primary reason for the technology is safety. There have been a very small number of accidents with cars in auto pilot mode. The most visible of these have involved Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) vehicles.

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As a division of Alphabet, Waymo has huge amounts of capital available to it that other tech startups do not. On the other hand, the world’s largest car companies, each of which is driving into the business, have capital, product development, R&D capacity and distribution networks.

Even if the public comes to accept self-driving cars, there is no guarantee and a Waymo partnership with Chrysler will be a winner.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.