Ford Plans a Fleet of Fully Autonomous Cars Operating in a Ride-Hail Service By 2021 (recode.net)

Ford will mass-produce autonomous vehicles without steering wheels by 2021, Ford chief executive Mark Fields said today at the Ford Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto, California. Recode reports:Fields announced that the company is working toward launching a fleet of commercial, level 4 (one level below a completely autonomous system, in which drivers don't have to be engaged) vehicles in a ride-hail service by 2021. The details of that ride-hail service -- such as which company Ford will partner with to operate it -- still haven't been determined. As part of that effort, Ford is investing in Velodyne, a self-driving tech company, and is working with three other startups. Ford has acquired Israel-based computer vision and machine learning company SAIPS, struck up an exclusive licensing agreement with machine vision company Nirenberg Neuroscience LLC and, as previously announced, invested in 3-D mapping startup Civil Maps.

Comments

Interesting

[ErichTheRed]

Your Car in the Cloud.

Makes sense given the sentiment everyone seems to have about not owning anything these days. Renting living space is way up, companies aren't buying their own computers and data centers anymore, companies don't even own their own core assets like buildings and office furniture. Everything is a creaky tower of outsourcing from the coffee pots to the building management systems.

I'd actually be happier if Ford ended up doing this first instead of Google. I love the idea of a self-driving car, but don't really like the idea of Google having full access to yet another facet of everyone's lives.

Re:Interesting

[JaredOfEuropa]

Sometimes it just makes sense. Leasing instead of owning means you have a lot more flexibility, your capital isn't tied up, and if you lease something that turns out to be not to your liking, your headache will be an organisational rather than a financial one. My brother's small company actually owned their office but had to move to something larger, and then that office turned into a financial millstone around their necks (try selling any office space in this area post 2008, ha ha). Same happens with people who have to move for whatever reason (or worse: go through a divorce) and need to sell their house, but can't.

In the long run, owning is cheaper and you can do whatever you want to your property, but in a lot of cases that freedom isn't very important to people or companies. And when it comes to cars, I suspect that it will be a lot cheaper to rent an autonomous car instead of owning one in case that (second) car is not used daily. There is some convenience to owning a car; you can leave your crap in there and have it as dirty or clean as you want, it's always there to be used at a moment's notice. But if you're not using it every day anyway, who cares?