Ford plans mass-market self-driving car by 2021
Ford plans mass-market self-driving car by 2021
By Peter Campbell in London and Patti Waldmeir in Chicago
August 16, 2016 7:00 pm
Ford's Fusion sedan that incorporates self-driving
technology, including sensors on the roof©Handout
Ford says it will build a totally self-driving car by
2021 as it seeks to take the lead in the global race to produce the world’s
first high-volume driverless vehicle.
The car, which will have no steering wheel or pedals,
will be used in the driverless taxi services that Ford said it expects to
dominate the market in the coming decade.
The company announced a suite of investments in
technology groups, including one alongside Chinese search engine Baidu, and a
doubling of its operation in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, to bolster its position
in the race to develop the autonomous technology that is expected to
revolutionise the motor industry.
“There’s a real business rationale for this,” said Ford
chief executive Mark Fields.
“Vehicle autonomy could have as big an impact on society
as the Ford mass assembly line had over 100 years ago.”
He said the cars will be “specifically designed for
commercial” services such as ride-booking or ride-sharing.
The move pits Ford directly against Google and Apple as
well as rival car manufacturers such as BMW, which has formed a joint
partnership with Intel and Mobileye to develop a fully driverless vehicle by
2021.
When it announced the deal last month, the German
carmaker said it wanted to become the “number one in autonomous driving”.
But Ford has announced a number of investments it hopes
will give it the edge over its rivals.
The company has bought Israeli machine learning company
SAIPS, as well as investing $75m in laser-based driverless system company
Velodyne Lidar, and forming an exclusive deal with vision processing group
Nirenberg Neuroscience.
The investment in Velodyne, which makes the laser-based
technology that is widely acknowledged to be necessary to offer cars that can
drive themselves, was made alongside Baidu.
Ford previously invested in Californian mapping group
Civil Maps.
A number of carmakers have entered deals with technology
firms.
Fiat has done a deal to collaborate with Google to
develop autonomous minivans, while Toyota has taken a stake in Uber and
Volkswagen has invested in Gett, the ride-booking service. General Motors
earlier this year invested $500m in Lyft, a car-hailing service.
Michelle Krebs, a director at Auto Trader, said: “General
Motors has been grabbing all of the headlines of late, and Ford can’t be happy
about that, especially as some Wall Street analysts have wondered if Ford is
falling behind.”
Raj Nair, Ford’s chief technical officer, said driverless
cars for individual use would come later. “We don’t expect to see fully
autonomous vehicles for personal use for several years after they are first
introduced”, he told a press conference in Palo Alto on Tuesday.
The industry believes that driverless cars will result in
far fewer road deaths globally, as more than 90 per cent of accidents are a
result of human error.
But the interim technology, where the car hands back
control to the driver in certain situations, has faced questions over its
limitations.
In June Tesla, which operates lane-driving technology on
its cars, disclosed a fatal accident in Florida when its system failed to
detect a white van in bright sunlight.
Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of Tesla, has
defended the technology, saying that it is safer than a human if used
correctly.
Mr Nair told the FT in an interview that Ford had decided
to leap to full autonomy “because we have not found a technology that can
ensure driver engagement [when not in control]”.
Mr Fields added: “We wanted to think this through
holistically and have a clear path where we are heading.”
Partially-driverless technology, which controls braking
and steering while on motorways, is expected to be rolled out in some Nissan
cars later this year, the first time the system will be available in
mass-market models.
Currently high-end Audis, BMWs, Mercedes and Teslas all
contain some form of semi-driverless technology, which uses a combination of
visual sensors and radar systems.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016.
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