Google Car release date news, update: Google's self-driving car project spins off as Waymo

Google's self-driving car has been in development for a couple of years now and as the technology nears its public debut, Google has decided to spin off the autonomous car project into Waymo, an independent company under Alphabet Inc.

Waymo stands for a "new way forward in mobility." Waymo is a self-driving technology company that aims to make it safe for people and things to move around even without a person behind the wheel. The recent restructuring from Google indicates the large strides that they have made with regard to autonomous driving technology.

"It's an indication of the maturity of our technology. We can imagine our self-driving tech being used in all sorts of areas," Waymo CEO John Krafcik said at a press conference on Tuesday (via Reuters).

One of the most telling signs of the maturation of the technology came in October 2015 when a prototype of the self-driving car gave a blind man, Steve Mahan, a ride in Austin, Texas. Mahan was alone in the car without an engineer to monitor the technology. Furthermore, there was no steering wheel and brake pedal.

"This ride was possible because our cars can now handle the most difficult driving tasks, such as detecting and responding to emergency vehicles, mastering multi-lane four-way stops, and anticipating what unpredictable humans will do on the road," Krafcik wrote on Medium.com.

Since the project started in 2009, Google self-driving car technology has already accumulated two million miles of real-world driving. In 2016 alone, the company reached over one billion simulated miles of driving.

Despite having been one of the first to develop self-driving technology, Waymo now experiences stiff competition from the likes of Uber and Apple. Earlier this year, the former acquired Otto, a self-driving technology company established by former Google employees Lior Ron and Anthony Levandowski. Meanwhile, Apple's plans for autonomous driving were recently revealed after a letter from Steve Kenner, Apple director of product integrity, addressed to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was made public.

Waymo will continue to test its self-driving technology across four cities in the United States: Kirkland, Washington, Mountain View, California, Phoenix, Arizona and Austin, Texas. Krafcik also reiterated that they are not a car company and that they will not be building automobiles. Rather, they are in "the business of making better drivers."