Ford CEO: ‘Self-driving cars still a long way off’
Ford and Volkswagen stop joint development of autonomous cars. Until recently, they both had major interests in Argo AI, a company that sought to develop the technology for fully self-driving cars. The plug is now being removed, because there is not enough music in it for the time being. The two car brands see a part of significant investments evaporate.
The idea for fully self-driving cars was already alive in 2017. Ford then invested a billion dollars in Argo AI. The goal was to bring a fully autonomous car to the market by 2021. Volkswagen saw good in this, on which it paid more than 2 billion dollars in 2019 to jump on the Argo boat. The two brands combined their capital to accelerate the development of autonomous driving technology. However, that seems to be further away than expected in 2019. Too far away even, so Argo AI is now pulling the plug.
As it becomes increasingly clear how difficult it is to make fully self-driving cars, the stock values of the companies that take care of them continue to fall. More than $100 billion has already been invested in research into the technology, according to an estimate by the Reuters news agency, but there are several companies whose values have plummeted in recent years. Argo AI is one of them, and now that Ford and VW are withdrawing, the curtain is falling for that company.
“Harder than putting a man on the moon”
Ford indicates that it will no longer be concerned with autonomous driving levels 4 and 5. The brand is shifting its attention to further developing autonomous technologies that are already on the horizon, instead of large-scale self-driving cars. “Developing that is more difficult than putting a man on the moon,” said a bigwig at Ford’s development department. Ford CEO Jim Farley expects fully autonomous cars to be years away if the technology ever gets there.
He adds that the brand will not necessarily have to develop the technology itself, should it ever become possible to produce and deploy autonomous cars on a large scale. Argo AI is the victim of this, although it could cause a chain reaction in the world and several similar companies will soon cease to exist. That two of the biggest names in the automotive world are withdrawing from such an undertaking is a sign on the wall. Ford would undoubtedly have liked it differently: the brand is in the red for Q3 2022 and attributes this largely to the loss of investments in Argo AI.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl