LG-Google Partnership

 

Google is more likely to join hands with LG Electronics for its self-driving car commercialization project.

According to foreign press, including Bloomberg View, and industry sources on Jan. 14, John Krafcik, CEO of the Self-Driving Car Division at Google, said in a press conference at the Detroit motor show that the tech company was going to "need a lot of help in the next stage of our project" and would be "partnering more and more." He said that's because Google doesn't have experience with mass production of cars. Krafcik took a senior engineering position at Ford Motor Company until 2005 and joined Hyundai Motor America in 2004 and served as HMA’s President and Chief Executive Officer until 2014.

Google said it would establish the ecosystem by partnering up with hardware producers, and cited the Nexus phones as an example. Currently, the Nexus divices are made by LG Electronics and Huawei. In fact, Google is considering the development and production of driverless vehicles with Ford in the same way.

However, Goole is likely to use two tracks of OEM and self-production. In fact, the Guardian revealed that Google had set up its own car company, Google Auto LLC, years ago to develop and manufacture its self-driving cars.

In this regard, some foreign press and industry watchers are considering LG Electronics its strong partner. LG Electronics is already a member of the Open Automotive Alliance, created by Google. It also has the largest variety of product solutions in the automotive application component sector, except for automakers, such as Hyundai Motor, Audi, GM and Honda.

In addition, the cooperative relationship between Google and LG Electronics is recently becoming stronger. Google and LG Electronics has also strengthened the partnership in the TV marketing and content sectors after smart phones. Lately, LG Electronics was included as one of primary partners for Google’s new platform for the Internet of Things called “Brillo.”

Meanwhile, Google’s driverless cars were being tested on the streets in California for 14 months and the drivers monitoring the cars had to seize control of the vehicle 13 times when the autonomous technology failed. Its driverless cars were involved in 11 traffic accidents during the period but they were not at fault in any of the 11 accidents.

According to data released by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (CDMV), Google's fleet of 49 self-driving cars travelled 680,000 autonomous kilometers for 14 months between Sept. 2014 and Nov. 2015, and there were 341 reported “disengagements.”

The report stated that on 272 occasions in a 14-month span, drivers took control of autonomous vehicles after the software detected failures itself and sounded an alarm. In 69 other incidents, the test drivers disengaged the autonomous system after identifying a potential problem.

After analyzing censor data, Google said that on 13 out of these 69 cases, driverless cars would have hit an object when the drivers did not step in. They were not at fault in 3 out of the 13 cases.

The average mileage of Google’s self-driving cars, which suffered from disengagements, increased from 1,263 kilometers in the fourth quarter of 2014 to 8,558 kilometers in Oct. and Nov. 2015. As their performance has improved, test drivers are less likely to disengage the autonomous system.  

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