Ride-sharing, self-driving Fords by 2021

A self-driving Ford Focus Hybrid on the streets of Palo Alto, California.

A self-driving Ford Focus Hybrid on the streets of Palo Alto, California.

Published Aug 17, 2016

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Palo Alto, California - Ford plans to offer a fully automated driverless vehicle for commercial ride-sharing in 2021, expanding its efforts in driverless cars and ride sharing, two areas where rivals have already made inroads.

Chief executive Mark Fields announced Tuesday the company would be increasing its investments in Silicon Valley technology firms to help speed development of self-driving cars, tripling its investment in semi-autonomous systems, and more than doubling the size of its Palo Alto research team while expanding its campus in Silicon Valley.

“We're not in a race to be first,” Fields said at the company's Palo Alto research and development lab, adding he was not concerned that rival General Motors had made a high-stakes play in ride services with its $500 million (R6.7 billion) investment in Lyft in January.

Ford does not yet know whether it will partner with Uber, Lyft or others, with Fields saying “all options are open and on the table.” He said Ford might even choose not to partner, and roll out such services on its own.

Ford's announcement leaves many crucial strategy details still undecided, but vice-president of research Ken Washington said it was important to signal that Ford intends to win in this space, even with key elements still unknown.

“We're saying to partners, we are the winning partner. It's not a hollow promise, it's a real intent,” Washington said.

Ford chief technical officer Raj Nair said the company was unlikely to offer a similar driverless car without steering wheel or pedals to customers until 2025 or later. Launching a self-driving car for ride-sharing first would be a better way to reach the mass market and make the cars more affordable, he said.

Going the full Monty

In a philosophy shared by Alphabet's Google, Ford does not intend to develop incremental autonomous systems that would occasionally require drivers to take the wheel, instead committing to a full self-driving car.

“We abandoned the stepping-stone approach,” Fields said, saying there were too many risks involved in the safe “hand-over” of driving responsibility between car and driver.

The death of a Tesla driver in May who was using the company's ‘Autopilot’ system but had his hands off the wheel has underscored the confusion over drivers' responsibilities in a semi-autonomous car.

Nair also said had invested $75 million (R1 billion) in Velodyne, which makes laser-based sensors that are a major building block in self-driving cars. Earlier this year, Ford invested in Silicon Valley firm Civil Maps for advanced mapping for self-driving vehicles.

Nair expects to deploy 30 self-driving Fusion Hybrid prototypes this year, and 90 in 2017. Ford, he said, now had the tools to develop a fully driverless vehicle, but “there's still a lot of engineering development” between now and 2021.

Reuters

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