In an effort to gain an edge over the competition, some manufacturers are now entering partnerships with companies that are working on technologies that might one day help the driverless vehicle.
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“The next decade will be defined by automation of the automobile, and we see autonomous vehicles as having as significant an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago”, said Ford president and CEO Mark Fields.
Tack “free” onto just about anything, and people will go for it.
Google, whose parent company is Alphabet Inc., has been testing autonomous cars on public roads since 2009. Whether you like it or not, autonomous vehicles will become a mainstay on American roads within five years, auto companies say.
Ford’s first autonomous vehicles are being planned without steering wheel, gas or brake pedal.
The vehicles will be integrated into Uber’s regular web-based taxi-hailing service, and passengers will be notified of the self-driving technology in their ride before disembarking, explains Bloomberg. Removing ways for human occupants to control a vehicle with is putting complete confidence in the technology and engineering of a vehicle.
Ford is on target to produce fully autonomous vehicles for commercial operation by 2021. Ford and other automakers “want to change this”.
Maybe it’s not fair to say nobody cares about Ford working on autonomous cars, but when Fields made the original announcement to a crowd, you could nearly hear crickets chirping. The aim is to quickly mass-produce a more affordable automotive LiDAR sensor.
Civil Maps: Ford has invested in Berkeley, California-based Civil Maps to further develop high-resolution 3D mapping capabilities. SAIPS has developed algorithmic solutions in image and video processing, deep learning, signal processing and classification.
Ford announced four key investments and collaborations meant to help deliver an autonomous vehicle in 2021. “It complements public transit, getting people to places that other means of transportation don’t reach, replacing the need to own a vehicle over time.” . Another tripling of the fleet is planned for 2017. “Our goal was to become a member of the community”.
“We remain focused on our work with GM to develop an on-demand network of autonomous vehicles”, said Lyft spokesperson Adrian Durbin.
Since the new Ford Research and Innovation Center Palo Alto opened in January 2015, the facility has rapidly grown to be one of the largest automotive manufacturer research centers in the region.
Plus the state has a much lower cost of living and doing business than California, especially with real-estate prices rising ever faster in Silicon Valley.
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The Palo Alto multi-disciplinary research and innovation facility is the newest of almost a dozen of Ford’s global research, innovation, IT and engineering centers.
