The tech lead of Google's self-driving car project is leaving the company after more than seven years.
CTO Chris Urmson announced his departure on Medium: "Now, 1.8 million miles of autonomous driving later, I’ve decided the time is right to step down and find my next adventure."
Though it started as a secret project within Google in 2009, the self-driving car team is now housed in X, the "moonshot" lab of parent company Alphabet.
The division hired former Hyundai exec John Krafcik as its CEO last fall, but has not yet announced a business model or plans to expand its tech beyond its custom demo vehicles.
Urmson has publicly stated in that past, though, that he believes that fully autonomous self-driving car technology will be available before his 12-year-old son needs to get his drviers' license.
His exit is the latest in a string of departures from the unit, Recode points out, highlighting that one of the project's other cofounders, Jiajun Zhu, recently left for an unnamed startup, while another group, including cofounder Anthony Levandowski, went to found a self-driving truck startup at the beginning of the year.
“Seven years ago, the idea that a car could drive itself wasn’t much more than an idea," company spokesperson Johnny Luu says via email. "Chris has been a vital force for the project, helping the team move from a research phase to a point where this life-saving technology will soon become a reality. He departs with our warmest wishes."
Urmson doesn't appear to know what his next move will be yet, writing on Medium that if he can find another project "that turns into an obsession and becomes something more," he will consider himself "twice lucky."
