Google has invested more than 1.1 billion dollars, now converted 920 million euros, into the development of its self-driving car. That amount came to light in the course of the lawsuit between Google and Uber.
The news comes from court filings, which IEEE Spectrum has looked into. Google apparently prefers not to reveal how much money goes to Project Chauffeur in its own quarterly and annual figures and prefers to put these figures in other categories that also include other expenses. However, in the Uber case, Google subsidiary Waymo estimates the value of every trade secret the company allegedly stole at the same amount, and that amount would represent the total amount of money Google put into the project from 2009 to 2015: 1, 1 billion dollars. Uber subsidiary Otto, also involved in the case, disputes the amount.
The amount is close to what is often sold in the context of the development of self-driving cars. Ford invested $1 billion in Argo AI, which is developing artificial intelligence for autonomous cars. General Motors is said to have paid more than $1 billion for developer Cruise Automation. An outlier is Intel, which in March of this year deposited $15.3 billion for the Israeli Mobileye.
Chrysler Pacifica Minivan with Waymo Technology