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With the Alphabet Company finally giving its driverless car division a name, it signaled that it is ready to enter the car market in earnest. Now known as Waymo, the autonomous driving division recently got in touch with Honda. It would appear that the Japanese car company wants to partner with Google’s self-driving car project in order to get some of that autonomous tech on some of Honda’s vehicles.
Honda announced that it was in contact with Waymo in order to make arrangements with regards to getting access to its autonomous driving technology on Wednesday, Bloomberg reports. Since Google doesn’t really have any experience in building and marketing vehicles, it only makes sense that it would need to partner with other automakers in order to enter the auto industry. Autotrader.com car analyst Michelle Krebs is of the same opinion.
“For companies like Apple and Google, it makes more sense to supply the technology than to get into the car business, which is capital intensive and highly regulated,’’ Krebs said. “It makes sense for them to provide their technology to companies that are already making cars.’’
A partnership with the Japanese car maker would be logical for Waymo as well, since it is one of the premier car brands in the market. It caters to both low and upper-middle-class buyers, which makes it ideal for reaching the most number of customers.
With regards to its current lineup of Waymo vehicles, the division has been using Lexus SUVs, minivans from Fiat Chrysler, and its iconic Koala units for its roads tests, Business Insider reports. All of these vehicles were outfitted with sensors, cameras, and advanced machine learning software in order to give them semi-autonomous capabilities.
If the deal pulls through, Honda could be the third major car company to officially carry the Waymo driverless tech on its cars. It would be a timely business maneuver as well since Uber is hell-bent on carving a huge piece of the autonomous driving landscape for itself, whatever it takes.
