Google's koala cars were never intended to be the beginning of an automobile manufacturing venture, they're just an example of the form factoer for vehicles Google would like to see built by existing manufacturers, running Google's Autonomous OS and sensor suite, on a Google branded transportation network.

Google has been pursuing partnerships with car makers for years, so I'm not sure what part of this report from The Information even counts as news.

Google will presumably announce formally their strategy for spinning Chauffeur off into an independent, revenue generating Alphabet subsidiary in just a few hours, sometime later this morning.

Sounds like you are deeply familiar with this industry so you would be one of the people not surprised by this :-)

More than that, the Lexus they used kinda vanished from my eyes, all I saw was Google and a car, and Google became a car maker in my mind.