The automotive industry is a capital-intensive industry. Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne knows it and that’s why he is open to work with Google or Apple:

“Google can buy every automaker out of petty cash. And Apple — they made a net profit of $24 billion in one quarter. This is nonsense. What are we defending? What?”

In a not yet released 2-hour interview with Automobile Mag‘s Georg Kache, Marchionne discusses the recent rumors of a FCA partnership with Google for self-driving cars and how the automaker wants to position itself in an industry disrupted by the likes of Apple, Google, Tesla and Uber.  expand full story

Google published today its annual report on disengagements of autonomous mode for its self-driving car program (SDC), which is required by California’s DMV. The report details events where Google’s test drivers have taken control over the car’s autonomous system, whether it’d be because of a shutdown due to technology failure or for safety reasons.

After having driven over 1.3 million miles in autonomous mode, Google’s self-driving cars were involved in 17 reported accidents, but the company prides itself of not having been at fault in any of them. But with today’s report, we learn the self-driving cars would have caused 10 accidents during the past year if test drivers wouldn’t have disengaged the system and taken controls. expand full story

Google’s self-driving car initiative has been gaining momentum over the past year, but now it looks like the company has at least one more big piece of news up its sleeve. According to a report from Yahoo Autos, Google and Ford are planning to announce a joint venture to build self-driving cars.

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Tony Fadell, often called the “father of the iPod” and now CEO of Alphabet’s Nest, appeared on Bloomberg TV today to discuss his time at Apple, his current effort in the connected home industry and the future of mobility. He briefly talked about Google’s self-driving car project and confirmed he spent some time in the vehicles. He compared the experience to being driven by a “professional driver”. expand full story

Google’s driverless car project has been long in the making. The company lead development in the field since 2009 and as of September 30, they have accumulated 1,210,676 miles on autonomous mode through 2 fleets: one in Mountain View, CA and  one Austin, TX. Google’s latest official comments on the timeframe of the project suggested a commercialization of the technology around 2020, but a consultant on Google’s driverless team revealed that the vehicle could be ready in less than 3 years… expand full story

Google today has announced that it is expanding its custom self-driving car project to Austin, Texas. Previously, the company had only been allowing the car to roam the streets of California. Google now says, however, that it is brining “a few” of its self-driving cars to Texas. The cars will stay in the northern part of Austin, like its modified Lexus vehicles have been for the last several months.

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Google’s self-driving car initiative may not be as far off as many might think. During a talk at the TED conference in Vancouver, Google’s head of self-driving cars Chris Urmson said that his team is working to launch the technology onto the market by 2020 (that year may sound familiar if you’ve followed the Apple Car rumors). The executive said that he has an 11-year-old son that could be eligible to get his license in 4 and a half years, although he hopes that won’t be needed thanks to the availability of self-driving cars. “My team and I are committed to making sure that doesn’t happen,” Urmson said (via Re/Code).

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Google Ventures’ $250M investment in Uber makes a lot more sense with some news reported by Jessica Lessin this morning. The site is reporting that Google is making its own driverless cars to be “robo taxis”:

Google Inc., which has been working on software to help major automakers build self-driving cars, also is quietly going around them by designing and developing a full-fledged self-driving car, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the Prius has been Google’s main guinea pig of the self-driving car efforts, it looks like Google would like to control the entire manufacturing experience for these cars. In addition, the company’s focus is geared towards driver-free taxi services rather than selling the cars direct to consumers.  expand full story