You might take a ego - labor railroad car home from the prevention in five years . Fordannounced planstoday to build up a amply autonomous fomite to trade to ride - sharing help such as Uber by 2021 . The proposed fomite would not admit a steering wheel , flatulency tank , or brake pedal .
Ford is hasten its race to hit the self - imposed deadline by investing zillion into the project . The troupe has already dumped$150 millioninto Velodyne through a joint investing with Baidu . The investiture is all-important to Ford ’s raw marriage offer , because Velodyne builds a critical constituent for ego - driving cars called Lidar .
Lidar , light for optical maser radio detection and ranging , takes the place of human centre in autonomous vehicle by rake the terrain and route beforehand for obstacles . The vehicle can then adjust its position free-base on information received by the Lidar organization .
Ford is also doubling the size of its staff in Palo Alto , California to more than 300 the great unwashed according to aCNBC report . Ford will grow its ego - drive fleet of Fusion Hybrid sedans driving in California , Arizona , and Michigan to about 30 , have it the largest test fomite fleet of any automaker in the world .
The companionship ’s aggressive strategy for building a ego - drive auto by by 2021 will likely be met with resistance from regulators . One obstruction Ford will face is the US Department of Transportation ’s strict rules about vehicle design and the necessity for standard , manually operated controls .
In March , the DOT resign a preliminary report card on ego - driving cars and it did n’t look great for self - labor automaker . The agency set that regulators must cipher out how to certify a car that completely abandon all precedent set by the currentfederal motor fomite safety standards . In most cases , the laws have not caught up with the Modern engineering science , and lawmakers are n’t in a rush to start bending the rule for emerging engineering science that could threaten lives on the road .
The DOT is n’t the only delegacy carmaker require to get retiring , either . The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has its own set of formula too . People like Chris Urmson , the manager of Google ’s ego - driving car task , have been vocal about their displeasure with all the touchstone .
In February , Urmsonpenned a letteron behalf of Google to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration enjoin that regulations that involve a steering wheel “ could be detrimental to refuge because the human occupants could attempt to override the self - driving system ’s determination . ” He believes strict rules on egress technologies could place a ceiling on emerging self - drive railroad car technologies .
So even though Ford has all of the right partnerships in place to commence building a Brobdingnagian fleet of ego - ride cars , it will still have to clear all of the obstacles . For newcomer , that intend Ford must receive a way to legally produce a car without pedals or a steerage bicycle .
[ FordviaReuters ]
driverless carsFordSelf - drive cars
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