Manufacturing News

Ford announces fully driver-less cars on the road by 2021

Ford has announced plans to have completely autonomous cars on the road within five years, with these initially targeted at the ride-sharing market.

Dow Jones reports that Ford wants no-steering wheel, no-pedal vehicles be on the road by 2021. Ford president and CEO Mark Fields said the next decade would be “defined by automation of the automobile, and we see autonomous vehicles as having as significant an impact on society as Ford’s moving assembly line did 100 years ago.”

Separately, the company also announced that it had acquired Israeli machine learning company SAIPS and sunk $75 million into lidar company Velodyne, which aims to bring the cost of its sensors down to between $US300 and $US500.

The car maker has invested in four start-ups this year and will double its Silicon Valley team, establishing a dedicated campus in Palo Alto, by the end of next year.

 

 

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