(Newswire.net — September 13, 2016) — Tesla, Google, and Apple have been racing hard for the chief spot in the competition to offer the first driverless vehicle. These three have covered so much ground that it seems unlikely another manufacturer could vie for the top spot.
However, many other car companies are seeking to join the driverless car market, including Ford, which is promising a self-driving car on the market by 2021. This comes from a recent announcement at an event in Palo Alto during which Ford publicly stated its intent to double its investment in driverless car research.
The venerable car manufacturer plans to use this money to expand its Palo Alto research campus and pursue deals with other companies to complete production of a driverless vehicle sooner. Because of Ford’s hustle to get the job done, the company promises a vehicle not just for testing, but available to customers by the end of five years from now.
“We’re announcing today our intent to have a high-volume, fully autonomous vehicle in commercial operation by 2021,” Ford Motor Company CEO Mark Fields told Slate.com. “[It will have] no steering wheel, no brake pedals, no gas pedals.”
It will be like hiring an Uber vehicle to pick you up but without a driver in the front seat. Because of this potential investment, Field is predicting that Ford will once again be the initial pioneer in this vehicle dream.
“[This will have] just as significant an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did more than 100 years ago,” he said.
Ford has a long and varied history when it comes to pioneering and high-performing vehicles. It was the first manufacturer to develop a working car that was accessible to the average working person.
Despite the fact that Tesla, Apple, Google, and Uber are in hot competition to turn out a totally autonomous vehicle, if anyone can create the first driverless vehicle, Ford has the lengthy track record to suggest it is entirely worthy of doing so.
“We’ve taken our time to discuss our autonomous vehicle plans,” Fields said. “The reason we’ve taken our time is because our philosophy is that we’re not in a race to make announcements. We’re in a race to do what’s right for the business and our customers. We want to think through this in a holistic way, a very deliberate and strategic way.”
Much of Ford’s investment, alongside the deal with the Chinese web company Baidu, will go toward using and exploring LIDAR sensor systems. These are extremely costly sensors that make it possible to identify objects and activity that surround a vehicle. It’s what will make a vehicle capable of doing such things as stopping at traffic lights and avoid a collision with a pedestrian.
Google uses LIDAR sensors, but Tesla does not, which potentially puts Ford ahead of Tesla. In fact, Ford has stated its distaste for Tesla’s style of automation, and stated that it’s slowing down the technology.
Ford is opting to jump for full automation, which means there will be no option for anyone but the computer to operate the vehicle. It’s the company’s belief that this style is the safest and most efficient route to self-operated cars.
Ford has already developed several self-driving vehicles, including a few models of their Fusion Hybrid line. By the end of next year, it’s hoping to have a fleet of 30 self-driving cars, which will be the largest any automaker has produced.
With a large fleet, Ford can commence safety testing more quickly before putting the vehicles on the market. According to an interview with Forbes, Ford has made some major advances in vehicle design.
When asked what stage the firm is at in production, Randy Visintainer, director of Autonomous Vehicles at Ford, said, “We’ve transitioned into the advanced stage, but because the technology development and the vehicle development are so intertwined, we’ve kind of blurred [those lines]. Instead of being sequential, we’re parallel. We’ve got a program team up and running and we’re looking at the requirements of the vehicle platform as we’re evolving the technology.”
The five-year timeline seems on the short side when compared to the competitors’ timelines for turning out autonomous vehicles. Visintainer admits it’s a challenge, but he’s optimistic it will lead to bright results.
“We believe it’s achievable or we wouldn’t have gone public…. We’ve been working on a research level in autonomy for over 10 years. And we’ve seen the technology maturing: advances in the machine learning and the compute platform, the speed and density of the silicon, the sensor capabilities and costs coming down,” Visintainer explained to Forbes.
“As we’ve been moving our research forward and taking advantage of these advances, we felt confident we were ready to move into the advance phase of the project last year. And we’ve been building confidence around this timeline over the last year.”
Ford has made a lot of progress already in the race to produce the first consumer-owned driverless car. Much has gone into the debate over whether or not the American carmaker can meet its five-year timeline, but its innovations and the boundless confidence exhibited by Ford executives suggests how strongly they believe in the potential success in this venture.