Waymo is within Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which was created last year to oversee far-flung projects that have nothing to do with Google’s main business of online search and advertising.

Google began working on its self-driving technology in 2009 in a secretive lab called “X” run by company co-founder Sergey Brin. Since then, its cars have covered more than 2.3 million miles while steered by a robot.