Google Looks To Tesla Motors, SpaceX Talent In Autonomous Car Push

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has hired Tesla’s Autopilot Engineering Manager, Robert Rose for the company’s car division reports 9to5Google. Mr. Rose previously worked as the lead software engineer for Space X’s Falcon 9 and Dragon Flight program. He moved to Tesla to develop the company’s Autopilot V7.0 feature. Due to his work, Tesla cars can now autosteer and perform auto lane change.

Mr. Rose’s LinkedIn profile states that the engineer left Tesla immediately after Autopilot’s latest v7.0 update was released. It is not clear yet as to what position the engineer now has Google. However, his job description states the position as “Software Engineer for Google Robotics”. The publication believes that this may be the company’s self-driving car project.

Google’s autonomous car project has been in the works for quite some time. One recent sighting of the car happened to occur when the minuscule driving pod was pulled over for driving too slow. On the other hand, Tesla’s cars are not completely autonomous. Mr. Rose’s position in Tesla and Google will require him to work on two different theories and see where things go from there.

Google and Tesla employ different philosophies in relation to their autonomous plans. Google uses LiDAR technology while Tesla uses cameras to further develop the autopilot feature. Subsequently, Elon Musk has publicly stated that the former method is not necessary for full autonomy.

Ironically enough, Tesla’s Autopilot team decided to scoop up one of Google’s employees as well. Liang Heng was previously at the search engine giant as a software engineer for Google Maps’ Street View feature. In any case, it’s interesting to see these companies race towards full autonomy. It also provides an insight to their differing approaches towards the attainment of the same goal.

Tesla’s Model S sedans were the first ones to try out the autopilot feature and safe to say, it was quite decent in the terms of accuracy and safety. On the other hand, Google’s car is also safe; so safe that it drives under the speed limit. The stark difference between the two is that there is a human in the Tesla while Google’s pod roams around the streets of Mountain View on its own.


Fully autonomous cars are far from being rolled out to the real world. Testing and development goes on every day, yet it may take years for the streets of America to be teeming with fully autonomous vehicles.

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- Friday, December 25, 2015