Waymo and Cruise are the two current leaders in the race to commercialize fully autonomous technologies in autos.

The companies are taking different approaches.

One doesn't have to lose for the other to win.



The two most obvious leaders in autonomous vehicles are Alphabet's Waymo and General Motors' Cruise division.

Each is preparing to roll out fleet-based autonomous ride-hailing services in the coming years — but each is taking a completely different approach to the actual vehicle part of the equation.

Waymo has no intention of ever building its own car. CEO John Krafcik made that clear in an interview with Business Insider after the company, formerly the Google Car project, unveiled a partnership with Jaguar to include self-driving I-PACE all-electric luxury vehicles in its lineup.

Noting that Google's leadership greenlighted the autonomous idea "before a time when anybody thought this would be thing," Krafcik — who now looks less like the auto executive he once was and more like the forever cool keyboard player in a 1970s progressive rock band, goateed and with styled gray hair and a trimly fitted blue suit — stressed that Google understood from the beginning the need to partner with car companies and early on sought to imagine how that collaboration might work.

That's the game plan going forward, according to Krafcik, and Waymo seeks to develop its autonomous "driver," his term for the software-hardware package that the division, established in 2016, is currently simultaneously perfecting.

"We're not buying stuff off the shelf," he said, adding that "vehicle integration isn't trivial, but it's known, and we've done it six times." The most recent commercial examples are Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid minivans (a fleet that will grow to a few thousand) which has been operating in Arizona; the new Jaguars, which will have a fleet size of 20,000.

Waymo has also put its driver in a Peterbilt semi-truck to explore shipping and logistics, and the company is working with Honda to provide a sort of last-mile mobility service to take riders from mass transit to a final destination (Krafcik said there might be some interesting concept vehicles coming on that front).

Getting the software and the hardware on the same page

A Waymo Chrysler Pacifica. Thomson Reuters

For Krafcik, the integration of self-driving hardware and software is the trick, and that engineering challenge stands apart from what GM and Cruise have consistently said about the need to bring self-driving technology into the vehicle during the assembly process. Cruise's fleet of all-electric Chevy Bolts, testing in the San Francisco Bay Area and designed to eliminate the steering wheel by next year.

"By integrating our self-driving system into the vehicle from the beginning, and through close coordination between the hardware and software teams, we have evaluated potential failure modes for all systems, and addressed them throughout development to ensure a safe and reliable product," GM/Cruise said when they revealed that impending milestone earlier this year.

GM bought Cruise for about half a billion in 2016, and Cruise as a GM division acquired a California-based laser-radar (Lidar) startup, Strobe Inc. last year for an undisclosed sum, with the idea that Lidars units don't need to be what Strobe CEO Julie Schoenfeld called a "spinning Kentucky Fried Chicken" bucket atop a vehicle. Strobe's Lidars are about the size of a well-stuffed turkey sandwich.

A Strobe Lidar prototype. Screenshot via Medium

The contrast in strategies is obvious. Krafcik wants a driver that can work in any type of vehicle, from any manufacturer, providing Waymo with a wide range of form factors to offer customers in an online/mobile service.

Cruise wants to own its self-driving technology and make it work primarily in GM vehicles, managing the experience, the data gathered, and cutting out any middlemen.

Neither approach has yet shown that it will dominate the other, and it's possible that they'll be able to exist side-by-side in a future mobility marketplace. And without question, Krafcik and Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt have equal levels of confidence in their approaches.

And besides, each company's strategy is consistent with what it does best: GM and Cruise can build cars and lots of them, rapidly, while Waymo can execute on software and hardware, capitalizing on years of self-driving development. Odds are, the winners in this battle of ideas could be consumers.