A week after Google spun off its self-driving car research to a new branch of its Alphabet parent company, Honda said Wednesday that it is in talks to license the technology.

The Japanese automaker wants to add Google's self-driving technology to its vehicles, and would become the second major customer to do so following a similar deal with Chrysler. Honda's collaboration with Alphabet subsidiary Waymo would let it integrate self-driving sensors, software and computing platform into its vehicles.

Honda has been relatively quiet about its self-driving car ambitions compared to its Japanese, American and European rivals. The company offered the first glimpse of an autonomous prototype in June at its testing grounds, a former naval weapons station in California.

Today's agreement would augment the research Honda has already undertaken, and put it on track to achieve a previously-stated goal of selling self-driving production vehicles by 2020.

"In addition to these on-going efforts, this technical collaboration with Waymo could allow Honda R&D to explore a different technological approach to bring fully self-driving technology to market," Honda said in a statement. "These discussions are an initial step that will allow Waymo and Honda R&D to further explore the potential of a broad range of automated driving technologies."

By contrast, Waymo itself (and Google before it) has been very public about its own self-driving ambitions, operating prototypes on California roads for more than 2 million miles. The creation of Waymo is a way for Alphabet to move beyond the testing phase and sell the tech to automakers.

On Monday, Waymo and Chrysler showed off an autonomous minivan, part of a 100-vehicle fleet that will augment testing efforts on public roads starting in 2017.