Google has ambitious plans for autonomous driving, but the Web giant is facing more than a few major challenges, starting with the fact that it's a total newbie when it comes to the car market. So, perhaps Google can get a little help from a company that knows a thing or two about making and selling cars—like General Motors, for instance.

As it turns out, the car maker wouldn't rule out the idea. Speaking at the Detroit Auto Show on Monday, GM Chief Technology Officer Jon Lauckner said his company is open to working with Google on self-driving car technologies.

"I'm not in charge of deciding what we will and won't do, but I'd say we'd certainly be open to having a discussion with them," Lauckner said, according to a report from Fortune. His comments come just days before the head of Google's self-driving car project, Chris Urmson, is slated to speak at the conference.

Though GM would potentially be interested in working with Google, there are still many details that would need to be ironed out.

"You have to figure out how would something like that actually work," Lauckner said. "Would it be something where it would be an opportunity to work together in a joint development agreement?"

Lauckner's comments come after reports in 2013 that major car makers had shown little interest in helping Google with its self-driving car, which forced the search giant to build its own prototype (pictured).

GM already has self-driving cars in its roadmap. CEO Mary Barra last year said that some of the company's vehicles would include driverless technologies, like the ability to detect pedestrians, by 2017. The company is also taking on a project to build 120 miles of "autonomous" highway roads around Detroit equipped with sensors that allow cars to communicate with each other.

Self-driving cars were a hot topic at last week's CES. Mercedes showed off a fully autonomous car concept, the F 015 "Luxury in Motion," which drove itself on stage. Ford executives, meanwhile, promised that a fully autonomous vehicle is "definitely" in the company's future. But Ford President and CEO Mark Fields said the company isn't concerned with being the first to bring a fully autonomous vehicle to market; it's more interested in making them available to the masses.