The search engine giant's autonomous automobile, also known as the Google self-driving car project, has been getting smarter and safer as the company further develops it. However, seeing that there is no such thing as too safe when it comes to the traffic, Google is seeking some help from traditional automobile manufacturers.
'We are going to need a lot of help, and In the next stages of our project, we're going to be partnering more and more for sure,' said head of Google's self-driving car project and former Hyundai CEO John Krafcik at the Automotive News World Congress. 'We hope to work with many of you guys.'
This may also confirm previous reports that the search engine giant is partnering with reputable automaker Ford in making a self-driving car. Should the reported deal pushes through, reports claim that Ford would be developing the basic software as well as components, and Google, on the other hand, will be focusing on the car's "smarts" while the manufacturing difficulties will be offloaded to a company that is expert on the field.
According to a report submitted to California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), Google's self-driving car had been in dangerous situations in a number of times, and there have also been instances wherein manual overrides were required. However, it's important to note that such incidents have been slowly decreasing. There have been 13 incidents where one of Google's self-driving cars would have made contact with another object if not without the control of a test driver.
Director of the Google self-driving car project Chris Urmson wrote on Medium that he expects such instances to decline over time. Google's engineers can replay such incidents to predict how the car would have been behaving through a simulator. All of the incidents, according to Google, are "driver-initiated disengagements," wherein a manual passenger had to take control of the car.
