Google has hired automotive industry veteran John Krafcik to run its self-driving car project, the company said Sunday.
Chris Urmson, an engineer who has led the project through years of experimentation, will remain its technical lead. But hiring Krafcik, a business and thought leader in the car production industry, as CEO signals a more serious stage for Google’s automotive ambitions.
Yes, true: I’m joining the Google Self-Driving Car project in late September.
Krafcik’s roots in the Bay Area auto industry run deep. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in mechanical engineering, he was one of the first engineers to work for New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., or NUMMI, the Fremont plant that was a unique joint venture operated by Toyota and General Motors. He later used that experience to write a landmark article for MIT Sloan Management Review called “Triumph of the Lean Production System.” The NUMMI plant closed in 2010 and is now Tesla’s car factory, but Krafcik’s 1998 article became a manifesto for “lean production” models that cut waste.
His experience also includes a decade at Hyundai Motor America, half of that time as its president and CEO in charge of the carmaker’s U.S. operations. He also had leadership positions at Ford from 1990 to 2004. He has most recently been an executive at Santa Monica-based vehicle pricing website TrueCar.
