To keep technology in-house and accessible, rather than rely on an independent partner like Google, GM paid $1 billion to acquire a small company doing similar autonomous-vehicle work.
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Other automakers have shied away from Google for a variety of reasons, including disagreement over the ownership of data generated by such joint projects. Google’s team will then install the various sensors and other systems which are required for tracking other cars, pedestrians, road markings, and signage.
“Whether they want to take this another step is unclear to me”, Mr. Marchionne said, adding that he has ridden in Google’s driverless vehicle and felt safe. Speaking this week, he suggested FCA was open to further collaborations, the Detroit News reports, though cautioned that it was still “too early in this process to try and make a call about with who we’re going to end up with for sort of the winning solution” for the automaker’s next-generation technology. That’s less clear. Marchionne seems to believe that the partnership will be a long one, and that it could develop into so much more – but that may be a little bit ambitious, considering that the deal is non-exclusive and Google has made no secret of the fact that it intends to work with multiple manufacturing partners.
The Google Self-Driving Car Project and FCA will integrate Google’s self-driving technology into the all-new 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan. Google isn’t licensing its autonomous software to Fiat Chrysler, for example, and both companies are free to work with other partners.
The US agency in charge of highway safety early this year provided feedback indicating that a bubble-shaped autonomous vehicle built by Alphabet could qualify as being its own driver.
The partnership comes as Fiat Chrysler is forced to do some drastic range-paring to bring its business under control.
“I see this as having tremendous use in real life”, he said of the self-driving cars. In the first incident, another vehicle’s mirror grazed the side of a Google Lexus RX 450h when it attempted a pass and, in the second, a vehicle travelling at about 15 km/h rear-ended a stopped Google “bubble car” – which was waiting for an opening in traffic to make a right turn. That appeared to be a stumbling block with reported possible partnerships between Google and Ford Motor Co. and possibly General Motors Co. This means the company needs more vehicles to cover more ground.
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Fiat Chrysler employees aren’t serving just as “metal bashers”, he said at the minivan factory in Windsor, Ontario. The plant now has about 6,000 employees who build the Pacifica on three shifts.
