Google has been playing around with self driving car technology for many years, fitting it to a variety of standard family saloons. With the wealth of data they have collected, they have taken it to the next stage and designed their own driver-less car from the ground up.
Here is an artists impression, which could be a city concept car from any mainstream car manufacturer.
The difference is, Google is building them, and they look remarkably similar.
From Googles Blog: Just press go: designing a self-driving vehicle
"We’re planning to build about a hundred prototype vehicles, and later this summer, our safety drivers will start testing early versions of these vehicles that have manual controls. If all goes well, we’d like to run a small pilot program here in California in the next couple of years. We’re going to learn a lot from this experience, and if the technology develops as we hope, we’ll work with partners to bring this technology into the world safely."
This is pretty amazing and I think a pivotal moment in car evolution.
Google has started from the drawing board, with no car manufacturing or industry experience, experimented and developed a brand new vehicle around the required technology, rather than trying to retro fit technology into a current design.
A purpose built self driving car, with no steering wheel or pedals, I assume is electric, so environmentally friendly, with no doubt patented Google technology.
It seems a far cry from the new search engine in 1999, and shows how far they have come, their ambitions, and how more powerful they will become.
With access to resources some car manufacturers can only dream of, it will be very interesting to see how the car industry as a whole responds. Many manufacturers are already experimenting or making plans for production self driving cars, but these are conventional models with new technology added rather than cars designed and built from scratch.
Even if Google just licenses it's technology, it should quickly make back anything it invested over the last few years in R&D, assuming we don't have Google dealerships cropping up all over the place!
Whatever happens or however the major manufacturers respond, I think it will be good news for everyone as innovation like this will become fiercely competitive. This will push the boundaries and overcome the many challenges, legal as well as technical, pus will push the prices down for you and me 
Some niggling part of me though does think we are slowly morphing into a Google planet...
What do you think of the prospect of being transported round in driver-less cars? Any views, good or bad? How long before someone mentions insurance 
