Moscow. August 17. American automaker Ford Motor Company intends to release the first fully self-driving car in which there will be a steering wheel and pedals, over the next five years, according to a press release from the company.
It is expected that initially this model will be used mainly by delivery services, which seek to reduce the salaries of the drivers and services on car sharing.
It is assumed that these vehicles will operate primarily in an urban environment, where they will set up special zones for cars without a driver.
In addition, Ford announced on Wednesday the acquisition for an undisclosed sum, the Israeli startup SAIPS that specializiruetsya on machine learning and the investment of $75 million in a California company Velodyne Inc., producing laser sensors. Also their money in Velodyne invested Chinese Internet company Baidu.
Ford and Baidu are going to reduce the cost of sensors Velodyne to $300-500 apiece, so that they can be used in mass production cars. The first laser sensor of the company was worth $75 million (comparable to the price of the Tesla Model S) and was quite cumbersome, because of what it had to be placed on the roof of the car.
Most of the major automotive companies, including General Motors and Toyota, are their own development in the field of Autonomous cars, some models have been equipped with a number of automatic functions – they are able to self-Park, brake when you see the obstacles and follow a lane on the road. However, Ford’s emphasis is on fully self-driving car – partly because of fears that drivers will not be able to quickly take control if the automatic functions.
