Chief technology officer Chris Urmson, who has been with the project since it began in 2009, announced his departure Friday afternoon in a Medium post. Urmson did not give a reason for leaving and didn't say where he would would head next.

"After leading our cars through the human equivalent of 150 years of driving and helping our project make the leap from pure research to developing a product that we hope someday anyone will be able to use, I am ready for a fresh challenge," Urmson said in the post.

When Google first launched its then-secret project to build self-driving cars, it hired a core team of 15 engineers, including Urmson. Led by Sebastian Thrun, the group went from driving modified Prius cars on closed courses, to testing custom-built Google vehicles on public roads in states like California and Nevada.

The self-driving car group is part of X, a stand-alone division under parent company Alphabet

When Thrun left the group in 2013, Urmson took over as the project lead. Last year, the group brought on former Hyundai America CEO John

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