According to foreign media reports, Ford recently stated that it plans to develop a fully-autonomous driving car with no steering wheel and pedal before 2021. This kind of car will also be mainly used for car sharing services.
To achieve this vision, Ford is working with a range of companies, including:
Investing in laser radar vendor Velodyne;
Acquisition of Israeli computer vision and machine learning technology company SAIPS;
Signed an exclusive licensing agreement with "virtual retina" technology company Nirenberg Neuroscience;
And invested in 3D map technology company Civil Maps.
In addition, Ford is also expanding its research and innovation center in Silicon Valley and plans to double its size next year.
An executive officer of Ford said that self-driving cars are not yet available for display, and even their appearance cannot be known. Now the company's focus is on improving the hardware and software of driverless cars.
Limited differentiation of fully automated driving
Ford’s goal is to develop self-driving cars that meet SAE Level 4 standards. This means that in a licensed area, the car can be driven autonomously, for example, the car may be confined to the Manhattan island area or on an airport line outside the licensed area.
Ford’s research and advanced engineering firm, VP Ken Washington, stated that “in the driving service, the designated area in the future will be large enough to reach the airport or seaport from the downtown area.†Of course, the scope of self-driving car services will depend on the How many high-precision maps can I have?
This is also easier to achieve than developing a self-driving car that can handle all possible situations because the car can only drive in areas with high-precision maps.
In the next five years, in addition to the development of corresponding hardware and software, Ford and other companies have to do something else: government regulations. They need the permission of the government to allow auto-pilot cars to get on the road. Earlier this year, companies such as Ford, Google and Uber had formed a self-driving car lobby.
No first to consumers
For how to use self-driving cars, Ford’s plan was to initially sell it to travel service companies such as Uber and Lyft. However, it did not say who it would work with, nor did it say whether it would consider developing similar car sharing services on its own.
It is still unclear whether Ford will provide consumers with such cars without steering wheels and pedals or will only serve commercial companies. But at least initially, it had no intention of targeting consumers. It is likely that the self-driving car will fully develop to the public after several years.
Ford also said that self-driving cars are "very expensive" because they require more computing power and sensors. However, the number of miles that can be driven will be more than traditional cars. According to Washington, this is because “cars will be driven in limited areas and managed by professional companies, and the company also wants cars to travel long enough to dilute costs.â€
For cost and map requirements, the first choice for self-driving cars for 2B service is a more reliable option, but Ford also expects that as the cost decreases and technology reliability increases, the future will be directly to consumers.
Ford is not without its competitors. For example, Google’s budding, driverless cars (again, without steering wheels and pedals) have been on the road for several years. Uber has also devoted considerable resources to the development of autonomous driving technology and has dug a large number of engineers from CUM Labs. . Ford's advantage is that only three of them have the experience of building a car. Whether or not the accumulation of traditional technology will lead Ford is still difficult to say, but it has already joined the competition queue.
For us ordinary people, Ford's plan means that after years of dreaming, the era of autonomous driving should really be to start a five-year countdown.
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