Ford Motor Co plans to offer a fully automated driverless vehicle for commercial ride-sharing in 2021, the automaker announced Tuesday (16 August), expanding its efforts in driverless cars and ride sharing – two areas where rivals have already made inroads.
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“Ford will be mass producing vehicles with full autonomy within five years and that means there will be no steering wheels, no gas pedals and no brake pedals – a driver is not going to be required”.
By 2021, Ford will be introducing fully autonomous vehicles for commercial operations. “If someone had told you 10 years ago, or even five years ago, that the CEO of a major automaker American auto company is going to be announcing the mass production of fully autonomous vehicles, they would have been called insane or nuts or both”. That investment was also connected to using self-driving vehicles for the industry. Those cars do not have a steering wheel, pedals, or any variety of driving controls because they do not need those tools. The cars will be used specifically for ride-hailing and ride-sharing.
The Guardian reported that Ford had not said whether it would be working with or in competition with ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft. The announcement is for vehicles that have Society of Automotive Engineers Level-Four driving automation. “That is what it takes to make autonomous vehicles a reality for millions of people around the world”, added Raj Nair, Executive Vice President, Global Product development, and Chief Technical Officer.
As part of that mission, Ford joined Chinese internet giant Baidu to pump a combined $150 million into Velodyne, a USA firm specialising in self-driving vehicle sensors. But making personal cars more autonomous is risky, he said, because Ford hasn’t figured out how to make sure drivers stay engaged and ready to take back the wheel when the auto encounters an obstacle.
The investment will help Velodyne ramp up production and drive down the cost of LiDAR sensors, which work like radar to detect objects but rely on lasers. The company announced investments in tech companies with specializations in machine learning, artificial vision intelligence, light sensors, and high-resolution maps.
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To date, Ford has already invested in a 3D mapping startup company called Civil Maps.
