{"id":25234,"date":"2016-04-30T12:47:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T19:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/googles-self-driving-car-is-close-to-graduating-from-x"},"modified":"2017-04-26T13:27:41","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T20:27:41","slug":"googles-self-driving-car-is-close-to-graduating-from-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/googles-self-driving-car-is-close-to-graduating-from-x","title":{"rendered":"Google\u2019s self-driving car is \u2018close to graduating from X\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Astro Teller, the Google self-driving car is \u201cclose to graduating from X.\u201d Parsing out the meaning of that string of words is a little complicated, but basically it means that Alphabet isn\u2019t thinking of self-driving cars so much as a crazy \u201cmoonshot,\u201d but as a thing that\u2019s just about ready to be a standalone business that could actually generate revenue.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not a close follower of Google, though, more explanation might still be in order. It\u2019s coming, in the form of a segment on tonight\u2019s NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt<\/a>. They\u2019ll be airing an inside look at X division inside Alphabet. That\u2019s the group you know as Google X, but after last year\u2019s corporate reorg<\/a>, we\u2019re all still getting used to the new naming conventions.<\/p>\n

Holt interviewed Astro Teller and Obi Felten, who have the cheeky titles \u201cChief of Moonshots\u201d and \u201cDirector of X Foundry,\u201d respectively. It\u2019ll likely be an overview of the projects that X is currently running \u2014 including self-driving cars, Project Loon<\/a>, Project Wing<\/a>, and Makani<\/a>. Teller will also be candid about X\u2019s failures. Failure being a favorite topic of his, actually<\/a> \u2014 Holt tells us that inside X, \u201cif you have an idea that crashes and burns, they give you a sticker.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Astro Teller, the Google self-driving car is \u201cclose to graduating from X.\u201d Parsing out the meaning of that string of words is a little complicated, but basically it means that Alphabet isn\u2019t thinking of self-driving cars so much as a crazy \u201cmoonshot,\u201d but as a thing that\u2019s just about ready to be a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,6,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-robotics-ai","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25234"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56682,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25234\/revisions\/56682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}