• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, May 4, 2016

As stodgy as they may seem to the Millennial generation raised in their backseats, minivans may soon be riding on the cutting edge again, thanks to a deal Google has cut with Fiat Chrysler to develop about 100 self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrids that will “more than double” its current test fleet of autonomous vehicles.

“Both companies will co-locate part of their engineering teams at a facility in southeastern Michigan to accelerate the design, testing and manufacturing of the vehicle,” according to a joint press release yesterday announcing the partnership.

“The vehicles will be used to turbocharge Google's seven-year-old autonomous car program. For Fiat Chrysler, the agreement provides a technological crash course in what it takes to transform a standard vehicle into an autonomous one,” writesUSA Today’s Marco della Cava.

And “the deal could allow Fiat Chrysler and [Google parent] Alphabet later to design a new vehicle from the wheels up, rather than retrofitting a current model. Alphabet has said it has no plans to build its own cars,” point out Jack Nicas and Jeff Bennett for the Wall Street Journal.

“Google and other tech companies ‘are not my enemy, these are people who will help us shape the next phase of the automotive industry,’” Fiat Chrysler’s Sergio Marchionne tells USA Today’s della Cava in a phone interview. And John Krafcik, head of Google's car project, says his company “likes the ‘nimble and focused’ nature of Fiat Chrysler's engineering team, as well as ‘the fact that they’re totally aligned with what we need to do at this stage, which is build more vehicles and get more testing miles under our belt.’”

“Google's self-driving cars have already logged more than 1.5 million miles in four cities: Mountain View, Calif., Austin, Texas, Kirkland, Wash., and metro Phoenix, Ariz., the company's project Web site says,” reports NPR’s Laura Wagner. 

The deal “marks Google’s first agreement to work directly with an automaker to integrate its self-driving system since the technology giant began developing autonomously operated cars on its own in 2014,” points out Bloomberg’s Tommaso Ebhardt. “Fiat Chrysler ‘is now potentially in front’ of competitors following investors’ criticism that it was lagging behind the industry in autonomous driving, said Massimo Vecchio, an analyst at Mediobanca SpA in Milan,” he writes.

“Some analysts said a self-driving minivan would make sense for testing the technology in a fleet of mass-transit vehicles deployed in a controlled environment, such as a Google or Fiat Chrysler campus or a city center,” write Reuters’ Bernie Woodall and David Shepardson.

“Minivans fit into the transportation fleets easily,” Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Karl Brauer says. “They can be a box-on-wheels and can move more humans around.”

The two companies “want to have at least one prototype operational around the time of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January, according to two people briefed on the matter. For the first time next year, the show will include space and a test track area for autonomous vehicles,” report the WSJ’s Nicas and Bennett.

“Tech companies such as Google, Uber and Apple, as well as chip maker Nvidia, have all been working toward autonomous vehicle technology in competition with both each other and car manufacturers. BMW, Audi, Ford, General Motors and Mercedes-Benz are among more than a dozen automotive outfits working on the technology,” Nicky Woolf reminds us in The Guardian. 

“Some companies, such as Tesla, have tried to pave the way for our automotive future by building beautiful, racy cars that become objects of desire. Google seems to be taking pretty much the opposite approach, focusing on safety and practicality to the exclusion of curb appeal,” writes Will Oremus for Slate. “That makes sense when you consider how people are likely to use cars that are fully driverless, as opposed to those that simply offer an autopilot mode.”

Indeed, “the deal will place Fiat Chrysler firmly among the car companies — such as Ford — seeking to develop vehicles that can handle whole journeys without seeking help from a human driver. Google has been among the most ambitious members of this camp, seeking eventually to develop vehicles that will lack steering wheels and pedals,” writes Robert Wright for Financial Times.

In other words, soon we’ll all be strapped into the backseat, playing games on our device du temps and wondering aloud, “Are we almost there?”