Even if not, I'm also thinking that if the roadmap here is for a drop-in replacement OS for the AI inside Google cars - don't they currently run a variant of Linux? Which as the fastcompany article says, isn't an RTOS.
CPU from scratch?
Are you referring to the LLVM backend for a "new" lanai ISA that they contributed recently? That wasn't designed by Google (but an existing networking equipment manufacturer) and it wasn't a general purpose CPU (integer only, no hardware dividers, made for running a TCP/IP stack and not much else).
This new kernel/OS is a bit more interesting than that. This seems to be targeted at end user devices, runs on x86 and ARM and has got some kind of userspace with UI going on.
It would be interesting to know what this is targeted at.
Personally, I wouldn't call that 'definitely C' or 'definitely C++'
The Linux kernel, just for reference, is 95.7% C and only 2% C++
