Open Relationship

Google and FCA might be making minivans together, but they’re still seeing other people.

“This is just FCA and Google building 100 cars together,” Google self-driving car chief executive John Krafcik said in an interview on the sidelines of an energy conference in Washington.

“We’re still talking to a lot of different automakers,” he added. “We’ve been very open about what the technology is and the problem we want to solve together. Solving this problem is going to require a lot of partnership.”

That’s either a pretty good headfake or a remarkably unenthusiastic partnership endorsement.

Recall my earlier post that this partnership seems like a minor win for Google and even less promising for FCA.