Alphabet’s Waymo begins testing self-driving trucks

New York, June 3 (IANS) Amid the tussle with Uber on the theft of its self-driving car technology, Google's Waymo has started testing its own autonomous truck.

According to a report in BuzzFeed, Waymo's self-driving truck was spotted in a photo and the development was later confirmed by the company.

A spokesperson from Waymo -- Google's self-driving car arm -- said that it took "eight years of experience in building self-driving hardware and software and conducting a technical exploration into how our technology can integrate into a truck."

Safety was the focus of the expansion into the sector, the spokesperson said, with the aim of reducing "thousands of trucking-related deaths each year".

Waymo confirmed that it was only testing one vehicle at the moment and it was still manually driving it on a public road in order to collect data.

Its rival Uber has already delivered its first shipment in a self-driving freight vehicle last August -- a short time after it bought trucking startup Otto for $680 million.

Waymo and Uber became fierce rivals when the former sued and filed a lawsuit against the latter for allegedly stealing trade secrets and self-driving technology from it.

The lawsuit argued that former Waymo manager Anthony Levandowski took information when he left the company and later co-founded Otto in January 2016.

Earlier this week, Uber fired Levandowski for allegedly stealing some 14,000 documents from Waymo.

(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)