PJ Vogt

And you are listening to an episode of the Search Engine podcast here on Freakonomics Radio.

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Welcome back to the show.

As early as 2010, Google's driverless car project had developed some very impressive self-driving technology.

But what they were struggling to decide was this.

What was the actual product they were developing here?

Here's Sebastian Thrunn.

We had a lot of debates inside Google what the right business model was.

At some point, we actually had a big debate.

We should just buy Tesla.

And Tesla was worth $2 billion at the time.

I remember this.

Maybe we should have in hindsight.

But joking aside here, there was a debate whether this is more of an assistive technology or a disruptive replacement technology.

Basically, should they follow the route that Tesla ultimately would?

Design self-driving as a feature in your car, something that could take over sometimes but still need human monitoring?

Or was it better to wait until the car could fully drive itself?

Thrun would eventually come around to this version of self-driving.

Specifically, he'd come around to the idea of self-driving robo-taxis.

A taxi service type system is way more capital efficient than ownership.