Back in the 1960s, when Steve Mahan was still a child, his mother would wake him up in the morning and let him watch TV. At that time, the space agency was preparing to explore Mercury. They were In preparation, TV will follow up on the progress of the project. Ma Han said: "How to prepare, technical details, we heard a lot of similar news, everything is for launch. Then we will count down until zero, then the ignition starts, the rocket fired flames and smoke, and then gradually away. Then you will think about putting people in capsules and sending them to space."

Now that Mahan is 63 years old, his eyes have become blind and he has become one of the “capsule explorers”. In October 2015, Mahan sat in the Google Autopilot capsule prototype car. He was the first public user to try it out and the car was on the public road. There is no steering wheel, no pedals, no control.

Google engineers believe that Mahan traveled by driving a driverless car for 10 minutes on the highway in Austin, Texas. This is a key milestone.

Eight years later, Google’s driverless car has traveled 2 million miles. Now Google has pulled its driverless car from X department and set up an independent subsidiary. The X department specializes in performing some lunar projects such as the development of online balloons and delivery drones.

From now on, the driverless business is run by a company called Waymo, an independent subsidiary belonging to Alphabet. Independence means that technology is the time to go to market.

Waymo CEO John Krafcik said: “We are a self-driving car company. Our mission is to make it safe and easy to operate, to carry passengers or anything else.” What does this mean? There is no answer to this question. Kraftz talked about car sharing, talked about trucks, talked about logistics, and even talked about providing private cars to individual consumers.

Pushing Waymo into the real world may be a move for Google to catch up with opponents. Once in unmanned discussions, Google was the core, occupying the leading position, and its technology could have been leading for several years. Most of the companies had not taken it seriously at that time. In recent days, Google's advantage seems less obvious. Last year, Uber, Tesla, Baidu, Ford, and General Motors all announced plans to actively develop fully self-driving cars and vowed to bring them to market. The time frame for the launch will be extended from next year to 2021. Inside Google, X department is under great pressure. Does the project really honor its commitment? Many people doubt it. Many executives abandoned the Google project, such as technical master Chris Urmson, and reported that he was not satisfied with Kraftz’s leadership.

In Pittsburgh and Singapore, Uber and nuTonomy welcome passengers to use self-driving cars. How exactly is Google's automotive technology used for commercial purposes? The company’s car team is silent. There are reports that Google’s car plan has shrunk. From this point of view, Google’s driverless car seems to be falling behind. The establishment of Waymo will allow the robotics department to return to the arena, at least in the eyes of the public.

Let the blind ride

All along, Google is advocating the idea that driverless cars can reduce death rates and can drive people who cannot drive. Boston Consulting Group released a report saying that by 2025, the potential size of the driverless car market will reach 42 billion US dollars. Putting Steve Mahan into the car seems to be a show.

At the age of 37, that is, in 1990, Mahan's eyes began to be blind, mainly because of a rare genetic disease "true small eyes." Within a few years, one of his eyes became blind and he received laser treatment in 2004, but the other was blind. The doctor recovered 10% of the vision, but this part of the vision was eventually lost. Mahan can no longer drive, in the past 10 years, he relied on relatives, friends, public transport, from the homes of Morgan Hill, California, to other places. He said that losing independence makes people very hurt.

There is a green “Go” button inside the Google Capsules car. Pressing the button will relieve the damage, at least for the time being. Ma Han said: "I have the opportunity to become like the past again. I used to drive in the past. It made me a complete person."

Mahan had already taken Google Car 2 times. In 2012, with the company of engineers and police, he took a car and in 2014 he sat in a closed parking lot. Last year in Austin, he was alone for the first time. Nathaniel Fairfield, Waymo's planning, control, and routing team member, said: "This journey can prove to the world that we have the ability to turn it into a ready product and push it into the real world."

In early 2015, Fairfield thought they were getting closer and closer to the goal: the car had been on the Google testing ground for a few days without human intervention. On public roads, the car has traveled 1.2 million miles. When the emergency vehicle passes by, it will drive aside. If you encounter a squirrel, the car will brake off. It will also understand the signs of the police and construction workers. The car knows when it should be polite and when it can make a sound. In the following years, the team also allowed the team to drive 800,000 miles to optimize various functions. Not only that, Google also allowed its employees to get in the car and drive it up to 10,000 times.

Fairfield said: "By bringing technology to this stage, we learned a great deal of experience. From this we know that if we want to bring the car to everybody and every place, we need to put much effort into it."

Expansion and Conquest

Regardless of the performance of the technology, it takes a lot of effort to jump from the experimental phase to the “anyone, any place” phase. Waymo needs to prove to everyone that its autopilot system can be driven in any environment and then enter the public for everyone to accept. If Alphabet’s new company is preparing to drive a car on a street, maps will be drawn on the first inch of the street, and data will be obtained. Enter the car and keep the map in the latest state.

Not only that, Waymo also wants to reduce costs, especially for automotive space radar components that must reduce costs. The radar is placed on the roof of the car like a KFC barrel and costs tens of thousands of dollars. Google is making its own sensor hardware with the goal of keeping costs down. Xavier Mosquet, head of North American Automotive at Boston Consulting Group, said that the cost must be cost-effective, especially in hardware, where Google had previously had problems with hardware.

Large-scale, low-cost car manufacturing may be the biggest challenge. Looking around the world, only a few companies can do it. In May, Google partnered with Fiat Chrysler to put driverless technology into the Pacifica minivan. Collaboration may be fruitful and bear more important fruit, or Google will come together with other manufacturing giants.

If Waymo can solve all the problems and gain regulatory approval, it will also build infrastructure to share cars, including car distribution and route planning. Uber has a huge advantage in this regard. Within five years, users have used the Uber system to ride 2 billion times. The time spent by drivers has been significantly reduced. Now, users do not have to pay by sitting in the car. According to Jonathan Matus, CEO of mobile data analytics company Zendrive, this is important and must have the right software.

Once you win, the next thing is to get the passengers on the train. Considering the numerous challenges ahead, Waymo is only half way through even the best possible scenario. It may take many years to solve all the problems. I hope Steve Mahan can endure his temper and wait.

Why set up Waymo?

By separating Waymo from Google Labs X and becoming a subsidiary of Alphabet, Waymo can speak for himself and talk about Alphabet’s autonomous driving vision.

First of all, it suggests to us that this is what everybody knows: The autopilot car has already passed the tipping point. In 2009, when Google engineers drummed the driverless car for the first time, we felt that it was a natural night talk and now that the driverless driver is more and more true. In the near future, almost all major automakers have announced that they want to introduce self-driving cars or semi-autonomous cars. Alphabet, Google and Waymo also want to be part of the revolution.

To achieve this goal, Waymo needs to have its own corporate structure, own its own full-time employees, own its own funds, and so on. Let Waymo be independent, indicating that Alphabet believes the project is mature enough to grow on its own; it has expectations for Waymo and hopes it will grow and grow.

In addition, the independent firewall was also set up for the project to prepare for failure. Google launched a number of projects, chopped off many projects, and counted nothing. Google is willing to take risks, is willing to develop new products and is willing to move forward. This is similar to Tesla CEO Musk. Musk once said: "If you do not allow failure, then you are not innovative enough."

However, the failure will have a big negative impact, it will sacrifice the company's interests, especially Waymo. For example, although Google software has traveled 1 million miles in road tests, there is still a slight chance that it may crash. If you do crash, it will lead to litigation.

Failure can also damage the company's image. By separating Waymo from the Google brand, Alphabet can separate core businesses from potential risks.

Waymo is not a car company

In the field of self-driving cars, Google is indeed in the lead, but Waymo is not a car company. In the future, Waymo will authorize and sell autopilot technology to automakers. The company will also cooperate with other industries, such as auto sharing, trucks, logistics, and public transportation companies, which need autopilot technology.

In Kraftsk's words: “We are an autonomous driving technology company... We know we are not a car company and there are many misunderstandings about this. Our business is not to create a better car, we It is to create better drivers."

Waymo's focus is on software. Recently, Apple has reduced the size of its automotive projects, paying more attention to car operating systems, rather than making cars. Waymo's direction is basically the same.

If Waymo and Apple successfully implement the plan to license technology to automakers, Tesla may lose its advantage in L5 autopilot technology. Simply put, Auotopilot is a bit like the iPhone in the automotive industry because Musk controls the car hardware and car software. But on the other hand, Waymo is similar to the Android of self-driving cars, because every car manufacturer can develop self-driving cars with Waymo technology, just like mobile phone manufacturer Android develops mobile phones.

Automakers went to Waymo in the hope that they would receive a technical license. Waymo would not hesitate to agree, so Tesla could become an exclusive, high-end, elite self-driving car brand. Tesla strictly controls the hardware and software, and its car may be more attractive to buyers.

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