Google denies car manufacturing plans – again

Google's managing director for central and Eastern Europe has told industry journal  Automotive News Europe that the company does not intend to become a vehicle manufacturer, despite previous claims that Google was working on its own autonomous vehicle.

At the Frankfurt auto show, Phillipp Justus said that Google was working on cars in partnership with the automotive industry, but was not planning on becoming its own car manufacturer.

Adding that Google's partners included automotive suppliers Bosch and ZF Friedrichshafen, Justus said that building a car "is not something we could do alone."

"Google also does not intend to become a car manufacturer," Justus said.

John Krafcik, former CEO of Hyundai Motors America, has been named by Google as the head of its self-driving car project. Earlier this year Automotive News Europe also reported that Google was in discussion with several prospective partners in the automotive industry to assist in the production of its self-driving car, which was covered by motoring.com.au in January.

Despite the earlier suspicions that Google was developing its own branded autonomous vehicle for sale, the reports from earlier this year already indicated that Google was not going to go into this project alone.

Google's driverless cars project started in 2009, intending to revolutionise the auto industry, with the hiring of Krafcik indicating that the tech giant could be starting to look at the project as a potential and relevant future business.

In an effort to stay ahead of the pack in developing autonomous vehicle technology, German premium manufacturers BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi have been rapidly taking on software experts with technology firms such as Google threatening to win the race to develop a self-driving car.

The reason for such a high interest in software expertise is due to cars needing lines of code to connect electric motors to batteries, talk to smartphones or applying the brakes when a radar system detects an obstacle.