Ford to Deploy ‘First Cycle of New Prototypes’ in Test City for Autonomous Cars
Ford’s goal in moving into its first test city for autonomous vehicles this quarter is to assess its “business model” in self-driving cars and begin “implementing the first cycle of new prototypes,” said President-Global Markets Jim Farley on a Wednesday…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
earnings call. CEO Jim Hackett didn’t identify the city in his CES keynote, saying the company will spend its time there “learning and incorporating these learnings into our autonomous vehicle experience.” Ford is “engaged with the local government and will announce the city in the months ahead,” said Hackett at CES. This "is the year where you are going to see a lot of progress” on the company’s autonomous-vehicle development, said Farley. Testing and development work will take “the next several years until we launch in 2021,” he said. The automaker will begin by “using existing products because we are developing an all new product which obviously won’t be ready until the prototypes” are finished, he said. “The fleets over the next couple of years will expand but they are going to be different types of hybrid Fords and that will play out over the next 24 months.” The goal “is to get people in the vehicles this year to see” how its autonomous-vehicle platform “works by itself,” said Farley. “We have a very concrete plan to roll out the prototype fleet of those autonomous vehicles over the next two years in multiple cities. So please know that fleet will grow in size. ... A very meaningful investment, money-wise.” The new “cycles” of prototypes will have “updated” algorithms, computing software and “perception equipment,” he said.