Google’s Chris Urmson Quits The Company For New Adventure

Chris Urmson shocked the world when he told he was leaving the team on Friday, After seven and half years. Without a question, He is the key ingredient in the project of google’s self-driving car project.

Not only that Chris Urmson was named as the chief technical officer of the project. And the chief executive of the project was John Krafcik who is Hyundai’s former executive. Another co-founder of Google’s self-driving car project, Anthony Levandowski, left earlier this year to develop self-driving tractor trailers.

Chris Urmson is the face of the project since its launch and before a US Senate panel on autonomous cars in March. A tweet from Krafcik confirmed Urmson’s departure Friday afternoon.

Urmson, Said in a blog post late Friday, said he was “ready for a fresh challenge.” He said he is not sure what he want to do next. “Going to take some time and get some perspective from outside of Google,” he wrote in a text message to Reuters. Also, Urmson told Reuters earlier this year that self-driving cars are coming. I’ve gone from hoping this would happen to think it might happen to know it will happen, Urmson said.

Johnny Luu Google self-driving car project spokesman praised Urmson’s after confirming Urmson’s departure. “Seven years ago, the idea that a car could drive itself wasn’t much more than just an idea. Chris has been a vital force for the project, helping the team move from a research phase to a point where this life-saving technology will soon become a reality,” Luu said.

And now since Urmson is gone this project is expected to be stopped for a while, Back in July projects first new general counsel was appointed. Recently google has many departs with a couple of employees leaving the company for a new start-up. Anthony Levandowski was one of the guys who left for a startup.

Google has more than 1.8 million miles of autonomous driving in testing in Texas, California, Arizona and Washington state Already. And Officials have told that “Google is preparing to make its self-driving car unit a separate company. The program is now part of its X research laboratory unit”

“The self-driving car project is in the middle of graduating from X and this is sort of a gradual process,” Astro Teller, who heads the X program, told NBC News in April.