Google Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) driverless car took another step toward becoming a real consumer product with real sales. It will launch cars onto U.S. streets this year. These will have neither brakes nor steering wheel. As such, they will need no driver at all.
The Google driverless car project once again begs the question of whether the search company can ever be more than a search company. More than 90% of its sales continue to come from search advertising. Its forays into maps, e-mail, smartphones and even its widely distributed Android operation system have apparently done almost nothing to contribute directly to revenue, which reached $15.4 billion in the most recently reported quarter, up 19%. The same report showed Google has money to burn on new projects — $58 billion in cash and marketable securities.
Chris Urmson, Director, Self-Driving Car Project, wrote in a blog post:
We’re planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls. If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. We’re going to learn a lot from this experience, and if the technology develops as we hope, we’ll work with partners to bring this technology into the world safely.
The car will have two seats, a start and stop button, a screen for viewing maps, and “that’s about it,” Urmson added. Its top speed will be capped at 25 mph.
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The car industry has begun to fill up with vehicles that allow drivers to give up one portion or another of their traditional responsibilities. Many recently built models have software that keeps drivers from departing lanes, detects collisions and offers parking cameras and no-driver parking. Mainstream software companies, led by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), have released software for the cars of a future with voice commands and systems that anticipate heavy traffic.
The other race for high-tech cars is in ones that have electric engines. The market leader for this initiative has been Tesla Motors Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), However, most major car companies are chasing the start-up with electric-driven engines of their own.
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The future of the car industry may involve driverless, electric-powered cars. However, the test of Google and other companies that want to capitalize on these advances is whether anyone will buy these cars.
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