Google's self-driving car
project has a new CEO: John Krafcik, an industry veteran who had previously
worked at Ford, Hyundai and, most recently, online car buying platform TrueCar.
Krafcik
brings a great deal of experience to the role. Before serving as president of
TrueCar, which he joined in 2014, he spent 10 years at Hyundai's U.S. business
unit (five of those as president and CEO), and from 1990 to 2004 he worked at
Ford Motor Company.
“This is a great opportunity to help Google develop the enormous
potential of self-driving cars," Krafcik said in a statement. "This
technology can save thousands of lives, give millions of people greater
mobility, and free us from a lot of the things we find frustrating about
driving today. I can’t wait to get started.”Krafcik, who will start in late
September, replaces Chris Urmson, who has been leading Google's self-driving
car efforts since 2009. Urmson will continue to be a part of the project, serving
as technical director.
The new
CEO comes at a crucial moment for the project, shortly after Google started
testing its self-driving cars on public roads in the U.S., and many car
manufacturers, including Toyota, announced their focus on autonomous cars.
though Google's self-driving car project is
starting to resemble a separate company, it'll still remain a Google X lab
project. A Google spokesperson, however, said the project is a "good
candidate" to become one of the companies under Google's umbrella.
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