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Ford commits to fully autonomous vehicles within five years


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We’re announcing our intent to have fully autonomous vehicles in commercial operation for a ride-hailing or ride-sharing service beginning in 2021. This is significant. Ford will be mass producing vehicles capable of driving fully autonomously within five years. No steering wheel. No gas pedals. No brake pedals. A driver will not be required.

 

https://medium.com/@markfields/fords-road-to-full-autonomy-36cb9cca330#.hk1ywv6bl

 

I'm still skeptical.

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Congrats, Mark, you've just had your Bill Ford moment

 

Ford later said that Mr. Martens's comments had been misinterpreted. Francine Romine, a company spokeswoman, said the company had not decided to give up on its S.U.V. commitment, but she also declined to reaffirm specifically the pledge and its timetable.

 

''Some of the technologies we thought would get us there did not materialize,'' she said, adding that the company was not giving up its efforts to improve the vehicles' fuel economy.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/business/ford-backs-off-efficiency-pledge-for-its-suv-s.html

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Some people here will not believe it.. lol

 

I'm not buying it. It's not going to happen any more than that '25% fuel economy improvement' happened.

 

Or the '250,000 hybrids by the end of the decade' pledge.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062901911.html

 

Ford Motor Co. has dropped a pledge to build 250,000 gas-electric hybrid cars per year by the end of the decade

 

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I'm not buying it. It's not going to happen any more than that '25% fuel economy improvement' happened.

 

Or the '250,000 hybrids by the end of the decade' pledge.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/29/AR2006062901911.html

 

 

reminds me of this

 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5PdHC9kAJK4?start=19

Edited by fuzzymoomoo
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There are too many variables on the open road right now for a fully autonomous vehicle. I don't doubt there is the technology to do it in an ideal/nearly ideal circumstance but the real world is not full of ideal circumstances. The other part of the equation is legal. When there is an accident who is liable? How do you prevent an automaker from getting killed (all pun intended) in the courtroom? In my opinion, they should continue to work on this but not be a true first mover in this arena. Let Tesla/Google or whoever wants to be the ground breaker deal with all of the problems that come with it. Once liability/tech issues are no longer a concern, then release a fully autonomous car. Until that time, continue to test fully autonomous cars and actually roll out cars that have the driver in control with technology assist.

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Who will "own" them? What will they cost? $ 1 million?

 

Will they be "public trans"? Or Uber? Some talk about being able to hail a driverless car* and go anywhere, in near future. How will people deal with software bugs and reboots? Stop on highway to download an update from the "cloud"? Will the be "foolproof"?

 

But then, look at old Popular Science magazines and see all the wild predictions of the year 2000. "Flying Cars!" "Air Conditioned Highways".

 

* These idealistic millennials move to cites claiming it's "greener", but they are hailing Uber private cars, instead of riding buses. And also expecting meals delivered, instead of walking to store and cooking.

Edited by 630land
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I have faith that the technology will be there eventually, but without better real world testing in consumer products I don't think this is something you can simply turn on at the deadline. It's something you gradually build toward and Ford's commitment has been fairly recent relative to other major players. And frankly their consumer autonomous tech has been stuck in a rut for awhile with absolutely no advancements in smarter lane keeping and ACC. Ultimately I don't think there needs to be a rush to the market because it's still expensively under developed and it's something Ford ultimately needs to partner with others on. This is becoming an example of duplication of effort, everybody is trying to achieve the same thing when they should be working together.

 

Ford has a history of making announcements to placate the press and investors and I assume this is just an example of that. We've seen allot of this from Ford lately, especially when the perception is that Ford has fallen behind in key areas like electrification, autonomy, luxury, and SUVs But as we know, Ford is undergoing a significant platform overhaul which they aren't going to talk about and explain openly so the press are left to speculate which you don't want them to do. I do believe Ford will be there when the technology is right and fully deployable. I know it's a minor thing, but Ford is the first to fully deploy CarPlay and Android Auto even though it wasn't first to get the feature. We also saw it with the parking assist technology, despite many earlier efforts Ford pioneered the CORRECT implementation and scaled it to everything and was very successful.

Edited by BORG
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, I can imagine fully autonomous 200mile ford EV in the future.

 

Maybe in another 10-15-20 years

 

At that point, what would be a reason to "own" a car like this? If I have no control over it besides telling it where to go, why would I'd be even bothered to "own" it.

 

Owning a car (well to me) is more about image or what I want...I guess I'm in the minatory these days...I actually like to drive (within reason)

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First of all - shoot for the moon and if you miss at least you reach the stars.

 

Secondly, the increase in information and data gathered, stored and analysed from autonomous test vehicles will not be linear, it will be exponential, so by the time 2021 rolls around, they won't simply have 5 times the data they have now, but 50 or 100 or 1000 times.

 

I don't know if this will happen, but given cars can basically drive themselves now as it is, I wouldn't like to bet against it TBH.

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First of all - shoot for the moon and if you miss at least you reach the stars.

 

Ummm, you have to pass the moon to get to the stars.

 

Secondly, the increase in information and data gathered, stored and analysed from autonomous test vehicles will not be linear, it will be exponential, so by the time 2021 rolls around, they won't simply have 5 times the data they have now, but 50 or 100 or 1000 times.

 

I don't know if this will happen, but given cars can basically drive themselves now as it is, I wouldn't like to bet against it TBH.

 

And that data still won't show that car parked along the left side of the road that the Tesla in Autopilot didn't "see" and then sideswiped last week.

 

The point is, you can have all the data in the world, but if you can't make intelligent, logical decisions about the one anomaly that shows up in real time, then that data doesn't really mean anything at that point.

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I think manufacturers are rushing into this unnecessarily. Let the technology be safely created over time (possibly in partnership with government while rebuilding infrastructure to support these vehicles) instead of rushing to create the technology that really isn't needed or being asked for.

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I think manufacturers are rushing into this unnecessarily. Let the technology be safely created over time (possibly in partnership with government while rebuilding infrastructure to support these vehicles) instead of rushing to create the technology that really isn't needed or being asked for.

The auto industry has been working on this for at least 30 years. The federal government has funded some development since 1991. What you want has been happening quietly for a long time.
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The early vehicles that are sold are only going to be able to go in certain areas where there is great 3D mapping and knowledge of the area, the car knows the area per say. You could have London, New York, Chicago etc are programmed into the vehicle with the maps and such and the car would be able to navigate in that area but wouldn't be able to cross a certain boundary.

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The auto industry has been working on this for at least 30 years. The federal government has funded some development since 1991. What you want has been happening quietly for a long time.

 

 

...and it still is not nearly ready for primetime. Also, our infrastructure can hardly support driving a car manually, let alone an autonomous one that relies on being able to see lane markers and signage (let alone the complete lack of V2I)

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The early vehicles that are sold are only going to be able to go in certain areas where there is great 3D mapping and knowledge of the area, the car knows the area per say. You could have London, New York, Chicago etc are programmed into the vehicle with the maps and such and the car would be able to navigate in that area but wouldn't be able to cross a certain boundary.

 

I even doubt they will be sold. More than likely the manufacturers will own and use for ride-sharing services to perfect and test it out. That's why you are starting to see all these buyouts / partnerships with ride-sharing companies

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