Waymo's graduation from X came after it scaled back some of its loftier ambitions. The early vision was to build automobiles as well as software — but that has been dialed back to focus on creating self-driving features for other vehicles.
The company is being headed up by chief exec John Krafcik, who came on board in 2015 after working for Hyundai.
The new minivans will be tested on public roads in areas where Waymo has already been trialling its self-driving tech, like Austin, Texas and Metro Phoenix, Arizona.
"As we get fully self-driving cars ready for the road, we’ll need more types of vehicles to refine and test our advanced driving software," Krafcik wrote. "With this great new minivan on the road in our test markets, we’ll learn how people of all ages, shapes, and group sizes experience our fully self-driving technology."
