Google reveals its self-driving project

Google said its cars had already driven more than 220 thousand kilometres on California roads with a supervising driver.

Why it matters

Autonomous driving moved from research races into commercial development, and with the team that won the Grand Challenge.

Sebastian Thrun, who led the winning 2005 team, ran the project with Anthony Levandowski. The project's existence became known from a New York Times piece the same day, after which Google confirmed it officially. The cars drove with a person at the wheel ready to take over. Waymo grew out of this project.

Event record

Event date

October 9, 2010

Timeline date

Event date

Verification

Sources gathered automatically · September 17, 2026

Lines

Autonomous driving

ID

evt-0253

The project was made public on 9 October 2010.

Sources

primary What we're driving at
Google · Published October 2010
secondary Google Self-Driving Car Project
Wikipedia
secondary Google to unveil driverless cars
Al Jazeera · Published October 10, 2010

Related events

Earlier

Related The Urban Challenge 2007
Urban conditions worked out on a closed base moved onto public roads.
Related Stanley wins the Grand Challenge 2005
The team and the approach come straight from the DARPA races.
Related ALVINN: a neural network steers the van 1988links to this record
Google's road vehicles grew out of the DARPA winners, and those out of the Navlab and ALVINN line at Carnegie Mellon.

Later

Related The first licence for a driverless car 2012links to this record
The first licence was issued to a car from this project.
Related Tesla Autopilot 2015links to this record
Instead of laser scanners and maps, cameras and over-the-air updates on production cars.
Extends Waymo becomes a company 2016links to this record
The project made public in 2010 became a company of its own.
- Say hello to Waymo · Waymo
Related Waymo opens San Francisco 2024links to this record
A project announced as research became city transport fourteen years later.