Lauren Goode: Our guest this week is Chris Urmson. He was one of the early leaders of Google's self-driving-car project, and he's the current CEO of Aurora, a company that does automated trucking. Chris Urmson (audio clip): I think it's much less a desire about making things autonomous and much more about improving quality of life. Gideon Lichfield: So Lauren, is this your first time? Lauren Goode: Are you asking me if I've been around the block before?

Two tech heavyweights gathered in a San Francisco courtroom last week for what was supposed to be a truly epic battle. Waymo, the self-driving car project of Google parent company Alphabet, had initially sued Uber over the alleged theft of more than 100 trade secrets. According to Waymo, the deed went down when one of its star engineers, Anthony Levandowski, quit and founded an autonomous truck company called Otto, which was acqui-hired by Uber, which like Alphabet wants to be first to market with a self-driving car. At the time, Uber was steered by Travis Kalanick, who last year was forced to step down from the $70 billion ride-hail startup following a series of embarrassing revelations about his leadership style and the sexist, alienating workplace culture that metastasized during his tenure. After just four days of fairly juicy testimony, however, the fight between the two companies fizzled.

Hyundai and Volkswagen are hoping Google's former driverless car boss will help them roll out self-driving vehicles on the roads by 2021. Chris Urmson, who now heads up start-up Aurora, will work with the two car manufacturers to develop the technology. The partnerships are the latest in a string of tie-ups between traditional auto companies and tech firms as they race to be first with self-driving vehicles. Hyundai will begin selling its first self-driving vehicles by 2021 in partnership with US based self-driving technology startup Aurora Innovation, which was founded by a former chief technology officer at Google's self-driving car unit Chris Urmson (pictured) Hyundai and Aurora, led by Chris Urmson, the former head of Google's autonomous car team, will bring autonomous vehicles to markets that can operate without human input in most conditions. The auto industry designates that as'level 4 autonomous driving,' just one stage short of fully autonomous driving.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham gives his list of what he thinks are the coolest tech innovations of 2017. The Volkwagen Group plans to roll out a fleet of self-driving shared mobility vehicles like this prototype, called Sedric, with the help of startup Aurora. SAN FRANCISCO -- The new year is barely off the starting line and the self-driving car race already has kicked into a higher gear. Chris Urmson, formerly head of Google's self-driving car program, announced Thursday that his new company Aurora has inked partnerships with Volkswagen Group and Hyundai aimed at helping both automakers accelerate their autonomous car programs. "Our mission is to get this tech out quickly, safely and broadly," says Urmson, who left Google's program, now called Waymo, in 2016.

Statistically, the least reliable part of the car is ... the driver. Chris Urmson heads up Google's driverless car program, one of several efforts to remove humans from the driver's seat. He talks about where his program is right now, and shares fascinating footage that shows how the car sees the road and makes autonomous decisions about what to do next. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

SoftBank Group just invested $5 billion in China's Didi Chuxing, China's biggest ride-sharing service. Last year Uber sold their China business to Didi resolving (by giving up) all the legal and antitrust investigations it was undergoing in China. In other news, Chris Urmson, CTO of Google's self-driving car program for many years, left to start a new company. In a recent lecture at CMU, Chris Urmson (who got his PhD from and taught at CMU), co-founder and CEO of self-driving car startup Aurora and part of the DARPA Urban and Grand Challenge teams, described three major transitions involving self-driving cars and said that "It's a wonderful time to be a roboticist." Urmson's new startup, Aurora, will develop software, hardware, and data, to sell to automakers who want to build their own autonomous cars.

Mobvoi, a Chinese voice recognition startup, signed a strategic partnership to build a 50/50 joint venture targeting the automotive market with Volkswagen. The deal involved VW investing $180 million in a Mobvoi series D funding. Modvoi has developed an advanced Chinese speech recognition system, Chinese/English translation, semantic analysis and integrated vertical and proactive search, all adapted for and connected with a smart rear-view mirror that provides navigation, messaging and information through voice input. Prof. Dr. Heizmann, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group China said: "This partnership is a particular example of Volkswagen's determination to work with groundbreaking Chinese tech companies like Mobvoi to create new forms of people-oriented mobility technology. We are impressed by Mobvoi's innovative approach of AI technologies, and we are pleased to form this joint venture to explore the next generation of smart mobility."

Abstract: "Self-driving vehicles will save millions of lives, make cities more liveable, save resources, and transform transportation to be more accessible and enjoyable for everyone. Despite a decade of rapid advancement in the state-of-the-art, perception of the technology still lands somewhere between solved and unsolveable."

Many motorists dream of the day they can sit back and relax while their car drives itself. And while Google and other companies are working hard to make autonomous vehicles a reality, it could take years to create a car that can negotiate complex situations on the road – including wet weather conditions. Google's self-driving cars can't currently cope in heavy rain or snow – or find their way around 99 per cent of the US, an insider has admitted. A Google Insider has admitted that the firm's cars (pictured) are incredibly reliant on maps, can't cope with wet weather conditions and are unable to'see' potholes. According to MIT Technology Review, the current prototype cars are very reliant on maps to navigate and can't react like a human driver, dodging potholes and other hazards.

Hackers demonstrated they can take over a Tesla from miles away if it connects to a malicious Wi-Fi hotspot. Dmitri Dolgov, a longtime veteran of Google's seven-year self-driving car effort, recently took over as technical lead, replacing Chris Urmson. SAN FRANCISCO -- Google's self-driving cars have hit another milestone on the road to the automotive future, notching two million miles on the autonomous-testing odometer. That mark, which the Alphabet-owned company announced Wednesday, was hit as other companies spent the summer dominating the self-driving headlines. Uber recently began picking up Pittsburgh passengers in its small fleet of driverless (though driver-monitored) vehicles, while Ford announced plans to sell transportation that lacked a steering wheel and pedals by 2021.