Vehicle Prototype

Google is holding talks with various automakers in a bid to speed up its plans to bring self-driving cars to market by 2020.

Google self-driving car project director Chris Urmson told Reuters: "We’d be remiss not to talk to the biggest auto manufacturers. They’ve got a lot to offer."

General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota Motor, Daimler and Volkswagen are the automakers with which the company is in discussions.

Engineering and specialIty manufacturing company Roush Enterprises is said to have built the self-driving prototype cars in Detroit, US, for Google.

"We’d be remiss not to talk to the biggest auto manufacturers. They’ve got a lot to offer."

The first fully autonomous vehicles, which use Nvidia-made microprocessors, are expected to be production-ready within five years.

Germany-based supplier Continental will provide tires, electronics and other components for the pod-like, self-driving cars.

Very soon, the company plans to begin deploying a test fleet of fully functioning prototypes of its car, which will have a ‘test driver’ on board with no provision for human intervention in steering or braking.

Being tested at a Google facility in California, the new cars have no steering wheels or pedals.

Google said that it would collect data on how the self-driving cars would interact with other vehicles and pedestrians.

The Google self-driving car is a project that involves developing technology for autonomous cars, mainly electric cars and the Google Chauffeur software, which powers the vehicles.

The project is being led by Google engineer Sebastian Thrun, former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and co-inventor of Google Street View.

Image: Google’s self-driving car has no steering wheels or pedals. Photo: courtesy of Google.