John Krafcik, CEO, Waymo, on Centre Stage during the opening day of Web Summit 2017 at Altice Arena in Lisbon. Photo: Stephen McCarthy/Web Summit via Sportsfile
Waymo CEO John Krafcik has announced that he is stepping down and relocating to Austin, Texas.
Waymo said Friday that Chief Technology Officer Dmitri Dolgov and Chief Operating Officer Tekedra Mawakanar will serve as co-CEOs to spearhead making self-driving cars a reality after John Krafcik left office.
Krafcik was recruited into the Google project in 2015. Under his leadership, Waymo launched a limited ride-hailing service in suburban Phoenix, where some customers shuttled in self-driving minivans. However, the problem of scaling has remained to this day, as the technology implementation proved to be really difficult.
After leaving his post, Krafcik said that he would be going on a sabbatical with his wife and relocating to Austin, Texas, from Silicon Valley. Austin is where Tesla, a leader in electric vehicles and a competitor to Waymo in the autonomous driving systems, is building its new plant, which will begin operations in 2021.
The CEO of Waymo has resigned and is moving to Austin TX... Waymo tech has been unable to scale or really work effectively despite billions of investment. Funny how this article was buried... #tesla FSD is the only horse in this race. $tsla $goog
— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) April 3, 2021
Waymo is changing its leadership at a time of heightened interest and competition in the field of autonomous driving. At the moment, the company has not managed to make significant progress in the development of its technology and to scale it. While Tesla cars move freely in various cities and unfamiliar areas, cars with Waymo technology are limited to only a few places.
Google has many of the smartest folks in AI working for them, yet Tesla is kicking their butt in the race for autonomous driving. Go figure. 🤷🏻♂️
— Dave Lee (@heydave7) April 3, 2021
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About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
