Cto of self-driving car project Google resigns after almost eight years

Chris Urmson, the man who has been chief technical officer of Google’s self-driving car project since 2009, has resigned. Last Friday was his last working day. In his own words, he is ‘ready for a new challenge’.

Chris Urmson will reveal the news on his Medium blog on Friday. The reason for his resignation is the transition of the project from research only to product development. He states that he is ‘confident that the project is in good hands’. However, two anonymous former Google employees told The New York Times that Urmson is “not happy” with the direction the Google project is heading. Urmson himself denies that it has anything to do with his departure. It is unknown who succeeds him. It is also unknown what the next challenge for Urmson will be.

Chris Urmson started his work on self-driving cars while still a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He and his team participated in the Darpa Urban Challenge, in which participants had to design a self-driving car that could navigate a fake city with artificial traffic. Urmson’s team won this competition in November 2007. The prize money was $2 million.

He started doing the same work for Google in 2009 and since he took office, Google cars have traveled 2.9 million kilometers autonomously, according to him. It was recently announced that Google is so advanced with the development of self-driving cars that it has entered into a partnership with Fiat Chrysler. Google technology will be integrated into 100 hybrid Pacifica minivans. They should be ready for testing by the end of the year.

Image: Chris Urmson via Medium