John Krafcik brings his vast experience to Google’s self-driving car project.
Based on their official announcement, Google is hiring new chief for self-driving car program. John Krafcik, the president of TrueCar Inc. will become the CEO of the department starting this September, the spokeswoman has stated.
Google is paying increasing attention to their self-driving car project and this can be easily inferred by the recent hires that the tech giant has made. The search engine developer announced on Tuesday morning that they will be bringing John Krafcik from TrueCar Inc. on their side to make the driverless car come true.
The new CEO is most known for the decade he has spent at Hyundai Motor Co. enabling the car maker to boost their sales up to unprecedented values. During the same period of time, Krafcik’s marketing strategy won Hyundai a larger market share on the U.S. market.
Among the many achievements that the CEO has had during his career was also the safeguarding of Hyundai in the 2008 financial crisis period. This was possible only through the “Assurance Program” that Krafcik introduced allowing American customers to return their purchased cars if they lost their jobs within a one-year interval.
In spite of his efforts the automaker did no renew his contract in 2013. The CEO became the president of TrueCar and has covered this position until he was recently coopted by Google.
Google’s spokeswoman did not reveal the new CEO’s plans for the self-driving car. She has only mentioned that Chris Urmson, the former supervisor of the project will be in charge of the software of the vehicle from now on.
By hiring the Mr. Krafcik as a CEO, Google may be working to make their car project autonomous. They could soon be manufacturing their own vehicles after the new CEO officially sets in. This way, the self-driving car project could become much more profitable for the search giant.
Google started their driverless car project in 2009, but it was only in the past two years that they started to attribute more attention to this new product. The company wants to be more than an Internet enterprise; for this reason they are developing various new projects to expand the company’s array of products.
Even though Google’s driverless car is making headlines every day, we barely know anything about the new prototype. The car is now being tested in various cities across the United States, including Austin, Texas and has been involved only in minor incidents during the past four years of trials.
Google has previously hinted that the car will be an on-demand service and that there are small chances for the prototype to be commercialized. However, the recent hires that the search giant has made indicate that Google’s self-driving car may be available for sale, as well.
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