Ford has announced plans to build its first fully autonomous vehicle within the next five years, an automated, robotic ride sans steering wheel or foot pedals designed for use with ride-sharing programs.
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The vehicles will form a fleet of taxis that can be hailed with a smartphone app, ferrying passengers to their destinations – like Uber cars, but without drivers. The company is taking these vehicles around to various cities to show them off, test them out on roadways, and generally get the buying public excited about driving-er, riding-in an autonomous vehicle. “It’s going to be an education and a journey, being transparent and open about the progress we’re making, and how we’re doing is a key part of that”. So, Ford made a decision to remove the driver altogether.
According to Ford, the goal of the project is to become the leader in autonomous vehicles as well as the automotive leader in connectivity, mobility and data analytics.
Ford Chief Executive Mark Fields told Reuters that “We abandoned the stepping-stone approach because there are too many risks involved in the safe “hand-over” of driving responsibility between auto and driver”. But there’s no reason to think the path ahead for anyone will be free of speed bumps, sharp turns and setbacks. Driverless vehicle sharing is not restricted to large auto companies, but the disruption was predominantly put in place by high-profile names including Uber and Lyft. Automakers have their own history of missteps, ill-advised corner-cutting, recalls and unfortunate choices. As the auto industry shifts gear to head into driver-assist technologies, autonomous vehicle technology could become commonplace in the next few years.
So instead of putting time and effort into trying to blend the two elements together, Ford opted to just remove the driver from the equation altogether, and this could be the future of cab hailing services. Nair said Ford’s investment was $75m.
“It and only it holds the promise of extending mobility to millions of people, young and old, that aren’t now served by an affordable form and accessible form of transportation”. “We see autonomous vehicles as having as significant an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago”.
Ford Chief Executive Mark Fields said that the company is unleashing Ford’s war chest in its investments in driverless technology in Silicon Valley which will increase its research and development in semi-autonomous hardware and software by three fold, and make its research lab in Palo Alto twice its current size.
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How exactly does Ford plan to pull off this undertaking?
