Alphabet Appoints Chief Lawyer For Its Self-Driving Car Project

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) announced on Monday that its self-driving car project now has Kevin Vosen as its first general counsel and full time chief legal officer.

Vosen most recently served as the chief legal officer at an environmental analysis firm, The Climate Corporation, a unit of Monsanto (NYSE:MON) Co. He was also a member of the management advisory council of Monsanto.

The new appointment to the division, which already has a CEO and a director, indicates the possibility of the conversion of the unit to a company, going forward.

Google has high ambitions for this division with aims of commercializing its self driving cars by 2020. So far, Google’s self-driving vehicles have driven more than 1.7 million miles in California, Arizona, Texas and Washington state.

In May, Google entered into a partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (NYSE:FCAU) to incorporate its self-driving technology into 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans to be used as test vehicles.

However, the road to success isn’t without roadblocks. Google’s self-driving cars have met with accidents several times, thereby raising regulators’ concerns.

On Feb 14, a Google self driving car struck a municipal bus while changing lanes in Mountain View. The company took partial responsibility for this accident and said that it has updated its software after the crash to avoid such accidents in the future.

On 16 other occasions, cars hit the self-driving vehicles and on one occasion a self driving-vehicle caused an accident when being manually operated by a Google employee.

So the new appointment appears to be a step toward addressing the regulatory issues that might crop up as Google intensifies its efforts toward developing commercial autonomous cars.

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