When Google Ventures announced earlier this week that it has invested $250 million in Uber, the move did not make much sense to many. However, now this $250 million investment of Google starts to make sense, as according to the latest report from Jessica Lessin the search engine giant has decided to manufacture its own driverless cars, but instead of selling them to the customers, the company will use them as “robo taxis.”
“Google Inc., which has been working on software to help major automakers build self-driving cars, also is quietly going around them by designing and developing a full-fledged self-driving car, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company has considered ways to sell self-driving vehicles to individuals. But it also has focused on the potential for an autonomous car it designs to become part of “robo-taxi” services that pick up passengers on demand, these people said.”
Although, Toyota Prius is still Google’s favourite car when it comes to making efforts towards a self-driving car, but now it appears that the search engine giant want to even control the entire manufacturing of these vehicles. The reason behind is that Google is now focusing on producing driverless taxis for general people rather than building automated vehicles to sell directly to the consumers.
Many would think that with this move Google is taking lot of risk, but the report suggests otherwise, as it claims that by focusing on taxi services the company has made a brilliant decision because according to the people familiar with the matter the cost of producing each model of current prototype of driverless vehicles is around $150k only.
So it could help Google earn lot of profit instantly. More importantly one can now also imagine that the new driverless cars of the Mountain View-based company would soon appear on the option list of Uber app, which currently offers taxi transit and black car services to the people in different regions.
To the extent the previous efforts of Google towards building a driverless car are concerned it is not clear whether the company would continue to offer its services to the car manufacturers in this regarding or just focus on its own project now.
More significantly so far Google has not confirmed any of the reports which claimed that the company is now going to manufacture its own driverless cars. So we have to wait for some more confirmations in this regard before making any further guesses.
Source: 9to5Google
Photo: 9to5Google
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