2023 is a very exciting time for automotive development, and things just got even more interesting than ever. Ford Motor Company recently announced the establishment of their new wholly owned subsidiary called Latitude AI. Latitude will be focusing on the development of hands-free, eyes-off-the-road automated driving technology. Ford BlueCruise, which already has accumulated over 50 million miles of hands-free driving, has been the first step towards automated driving, and Latitude’s team will be working on the next steps. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Latitude also has additional engineering hubs in Dearborn, Michigan and Palo Alto, California, and a highway-speed test track facility in Greenville, South Carolina.
“We see automated driving technology as an opportunity to redefine the relationship between people and their vehicles,” said Doug Field, chief advanced product development and technology officer, Ford Motor Company. “Customers using BlueCruise are already experiencing the benefits of hands-off driving. The deep experience and talent in our Latitude team will help us accelerate the development of all-new automated driving technology – with the goal of not only making travel safer, less stressful and more enjoyable, but ultimately over time giving our customers some of their day back."
Last year, Ford hired around 550 employees to work on automated driving technologies for personally owned vehicles with specialities in machine learning and robotics, cloud platforms, mapping, sensors and compute systems, test operations, systems and safety engineering. Latitude will continue to build a leading team of experts in these fields and in others, gathering together talented individuals to work on these innovations.
Sammy Omari, who serves as executive director of ADAS Technologies at Ford, will also now become the CEO of Latitude. Peter Carr will be serving as the chief technology officer and overseeing Latitude’s product and technical development, while David Gollob will become Latitude’s president, handling business operations.
“We believe automated driving technology will help improve safety while unlocking all-new customer experiences that reduce stress and in the future will help free up a driver’s time to focus on what they choose," said Omari. “The expertise of the Latitude team will further complement and enhance Ford’s in-house global ADAS team in developing future driver assist technologies, ultimately delivering on the many benefits of automation.”
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