Google is planning to get into the motor vehicle business with its own fleet of self-driving cars. Apparently, the search giant failed to partner with other well established motor vehicle manufacturers and has thus chosen to tread this path alone. If all goes well in the coming years, Google’s self-driving fleet might become a popular means of transportation in the U.S.

The plan here is to only offer the cars as a “robo-taxi” service that would pick up customers on demand from and to supporting locations for the time being. Google won’t run the robo-taxi service itself, the company plans to team up with an operator to launch the service in its own vision and likeness. Furthermore, we understand robo-taxis will support human drivers for safety concerns in the first few years, but after that, the cars will run on their own.

If you want one of these bad boys as your own, don’t sweat it because Google plans to market these cars to individual drivers if everything goes according to plan. Bear in mind though that if and when these cars are available, they might come exclusively for taxi services before individual drivers can go out to a car shop and purchase one.

We’re truly excited about self-driving car prospects, it could very well allows for less accidents and fatalities on our roads. However, expect Google to fit a screen in every robo-taxi for advertisement purposes. On the bright side, this move might lower the fee to move from point A to point B. On the not-so-bright-side, the NSA will likely have access.

[via Amir Efrati, image via Flickr]