Waymo could be worth as much $175 billion — here's a brief history of the Google Car project (GOOGL)

waymo google self-driving car

Waymo, formerly the Google Car project, is almost 10 years old.
After more than eight million self-driving miles, Waymo is preparing to commercialize in 2018 and 2019.
Morgan Stanley has pegged Waymo's value at $175 billion.

Waymo is almost a decade old. What started as secretive Google X lab undertaking is now on the verge of being a commercial business, planning to launch in limited markets this year and expand in 2019.

Since 2009, Waymo has amassed over eight million self-driving miles, using a variety of platforms. Along the way, a who's who of autonomous pioneers has worked on the project: Sebastian Thrun, Chris Umson, Anthony Levandowski. Spunoff from Alphabet, Google's parent company, in 2016, Waymo is now run by John Krafcik, a seasoned auto-industry executive.

Morgan Stanley recently pegged Waymo's potential value at a stunning $175 billion (the $50 billion-$75 billion range was what many analysts had previously suggested). That was due largely to Krafcik's ambitious go-to-market objectives, which include not just an autonomous ride-hailing service of the type currently being piloted in Phoenix, AZ, but also a logistics/delivery arm and a technology licensing structure.

Having followed the Google Car project and later Waymo with a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism over the years, I've been captivated of late by how quickly Krafcik and his team have turned the grand experiment into a major business effort. A big question since around 2015 has been "What's Waymo really going to do with all those millions of miles driven?"

Now we know.

At this point, it's worth it to take a look back on how Waymo evolved. It's the story of an absolute commitment to a future technology — Alphabet always wanted Waymo to get it right and was willing to patiently nurture and invest on a surprisingly long timeline.

Thrun and his team at Stanford win the DARPA Grand Challenge.

Thrun and his colleagues from Stanford captured the victory in 2005, taking on a difficult offroad course. For many observers, this was the beginning the self-driving car era.

Google X lab undertakes the project.

The X lab focuses on Google's most out-there ideas, from Glass to Waymo. The projects are called "moon shots."

The Google Car project starts to put self-driving tech on Toyota Priuses ...

The 2012 period was the Google Car's early days. Toyota vehicles were used to support the hardware technology needed to explore the numerous challenges of self-driving vehicles.

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