The announcements made by Ford during the CES 2016 in Las Vegas are going to highlight how they are moving beyond just being a company which builds and sells cars.
Fusion Hybrids
They are planning to add another twenty Fusion Hybrid autonomous vehicles in 2016 which will take their total fleet currently being tested on the streets of Michigan, Arizona, and California to thirty. In December, Ford had joined the California Autonomous Vehicle Testing program.
New Sensors
Their new Fusion hybrids are going to come equipped with the latest in sensor technology from Velodyne, their longtime partner. These solid state sensors are going to be around the same size as hockey pucks and will have quite a long range of around two hundred meters for detecting obstacles such as trees which need to be avoided. No one wants to hit a tree in a car, you do not even want to hit vertical street curb either with a car. It will certainly mess up your day and the car to boot.
New Virtual Driver Software
This small design allows Ford to focus on reducing their light based sensors from 4 to 2 in the new autonomous vehicles. They are also going to come with the latest version of Ford's virtual driver software, the brain behind all the systems of a vehicle.
Vehicle Development Program
These tests are all a part of the ten year autonomous vehicle development program which Ford is running as well as its Smart Mobility initiative. These initiatives were introduced at last year's CES and involves making cars which have improved Internet connectivity, experimenting with various forms of transportation and car sharing and using data analytics for collecting information from sensors in vehicles to better explain how people travel.
If people have better Internet or Internet in the car at all this means the passengers can more easily get some work done and spend the time more constructively. Certainly in traffic! On top of this, it could mean better GPS and navigation for your car’s system as well.
Autonomous Vehicles
Ford is actually taking a couple of different paths as far as autonomous vehicle technology is concerned. They are going to continue adding semi-automatic features to their vehicles which will help drivers stay in their lanes and park. They are also going to try and create a car which can autonomously drive in regular conditions.
As per the NHTSA, there are 5 levels of vehicle automation. At Level 0, the driver controls everything and at Level 4, all essential functions critical to safety is taken over by the vehicle and roadway conditions are monitored by the vehicle as well. At this level, Ford will be in a poignant position to launch a transportation service. It will be just like Uber, but far more lucrative. You do not have to pay a human driver!
Have you seen Total Recall (the original)!? Hopefully the driver is not an annoying robot though.
Their manufacturing capabilities could also help them design cars meant for specific purposes like transit vans. And since they are the ones building the vehicle, they will own all the data too including driving behavior, location, maintenance needs, fuel economy, etc. The data could be used for making their cars more efficient and smarter.
But it is going to be a while before Ford can create a commercially viable autonomous vehicle and there are no timelines on the table from the company either. Five years seems like a fine estimate. Right now, they are only interested in testing their fleet and driving as many miles autonomously as they possibly can.
There were talks of Ford going into partnership with Google to produce autonomous technology but the big question here is, if Ford has rights to the hardware, software, and data, what will any partner offer? Some people wonder why Ford does not just make the hardware and allow Google to build the software. Just because Apple and Microsoft did not get along last century does not mean Google and Ford cannot this century.