Waymo retires FIREFLY- it's self driving prototype vehicle

Waymo is done driving around the cute, steering-wheel-free autonomous cars that were introduced by Google back in 2014. In a blog post, Waymo leaders write that time has come to “retire our fleet of Fireflies” — their name for the tiny cars — and focus instead of integrating self-driving technology into other vehicles, like the Chrysler Pacifica minivans Waymo put on the road earlier this year.Waymo is retiring Firefly-it's self driving prototype  vehicle to put its focus on autonomous driving software in vehicles mass produced by big car makers,company officials said on a Medium blog post.

Firefly which was launched  in 2014 went from just being a post-it note prototype to a full-fledged two-seater vehicle.

"Firefly has taken us on an incredible journey over the last three years, and we're looking forward to sharing this bit of self-driving history with the world," YooJung Ahn and Jaime Waydo, Waymo's Lead Industrial Designer and Lead Systems Engineer, respectively, said in their post.

Google initially designed the Firefly back in 2013, Ahn and Waydo said. From the start, the car was intended to be an experiment that would allow engineers to explore different ideas about how autonomous vehicles should work or be configured, they said. Although it was seen all over the place in cities like Mountain View while Google was testing it, the Firefly was never intended to be a production vehicle.

"Firefly taught us exactly what it takes to go truly self-driving," Ahn and Waydo wrote.

Though it is heartbreaking to see one of the most adorable little self-driving vehicles of the future retire from public roads — also killing off Waymo’s automotive ambitions, it is not the end of the company’s efforts.