Ex-Googler Chris Urmson is working on his own driverless car company

Back in May 2014, Google had announced its plans to create a driver-less car, one without a steering wheel or any pedals. It unveiled a fully functioning prototype in December 2014 and began testing it at the San Francisco Bay Area roads in 2015. While the company hopes to make these cars available to public by 2020, the project has taken a roller coaster ride.

Earlier this year a number of members of the self-driving car team left the company. This included technical lead Chris Urmson who was also known as the face of the project. He had announced his departure in a post on Medium after being involved in the autonomous car project for seven-and-a-half years . According to team members, Chris has been a vital force for the project.

At the time of his departure he had said, “After leading our cars through the human equivalent of 150 years of driving and helping our project make the leap from pure research to developing a product that we hope someday anyone will be able to use, I am ready for a fresh challenge. I have every confidence that the mission is in capable hands."

It seems that the fresh challenge won’t take long as a  report  claims that Urmson is working on his own self-driving company. There is also a report that says his new self-funded venture might be unveiled early next year. While Urmson himself hasn’t revealed any plans, several sources claim that his project will focus on developing self-driving software, data and hardware. This could be sold to car makers who want to add a package to their existing cars and make them autonomous. Of course you should take this with a pinch of salt as nothing has been confirmed.

The only confirmation however is that Urmson has been talking to top engineers in the driverless-car segment who are working with Uber, Apple and Tesla. There is a high chance that he is trying to poach a few to create a highly qualified team of his own.

He has been responsible for building the code running Google’s autonomous software, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that he is venturing out for a project of his own. Urmson has been approached by many in the industry, but if he is indeed working on making his own A-team, there is a good chance that it might go big and become a threat for those who are poaching him.