Ford: Fully autonomous driving won’t be achieved within 10 years

According to foreign media reports recently, Ford Motor Company's R&D director issued a statement saying that the general public will not be able to buy fully autonomous vehicles between 2026 and 2031.

Ford CEO Mark Fields previously said that self-driving cars could be available to consumers by 2025, but now Ford has proposed a more conservative timeline. Ford is currently developing technologies related to autonomous driving and smart mobility, hoping to use these technologies to solve some social problems, including traffic congestion, deteriorating air quality and changing consumer perceptions.

Ford is currently developing a Level 4 self-driving car without a steering wheel, accelerator or brake pedal, and plans to provide online car-hailing services in 2021. Ken Washington, vice president of research and advanced engineering at Ford, said that it will be impossible to officially promote driverless cars to individual consumers for at least the next 10 years.

“It’s hard to guess or predict how fast technology will develop, but our view is that it will be a gradual process for self-driving cars to adapt to the market, and although it will be a slow process, it will eventually become a reality,” Washington said at the SAE conference.

Investment cooperation may be a solution

Ford recently invested $1 billion in a technology startup Argo AI, focusing on cooperation in the field of autonomous driving over the next five years. In addition, Ford has signed cooperation agreements with lidar manufacturer Velodyne, 3D map supplier Civil Maps, machine vision company Nirenberg Neuroscience, and computer vision and machine learning company SAIPS. Traditional automakers are currently facing adjustments brought about by some Silicon Valley startups, such as Uber, Lyft, Google and Apple, which currently have plans to develop self-driving cars.

Washington said: "I think the auto industry should be as innovative as these technology companies, and these technology companies also foresee that the challenges they will face in the future are more severe, and cooperation with auto companies is not a way out."

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.