Fiat Chrysler Group is cooperating with the field of automotive "autopilot" with its subsidiary Alphabet / Google, known under the name Waymo. Rival General Motors has invested in the young company Cruise Automation, to gain access to the development in the field of automatic vehicle control. Ford has so far relied on their own resources and attract American scientists to create the "autopilot".
Now, at the Ford Motor Company appears pocket autopilot system developer in the face of young company Argo AI Pittsburgh-based immigrants from profile Google offices and Uber. Last, we recall, lead their own development in the field of automation control cars, and recently became famous for a scandalous departure from the State of California, which requires test too detailed statements about the behavior of the prototype.
Technical Director, Ford said the company intends to create vehicles with "automatic pilot" level 4 SAE classification (above only the fifth level) by 2021. In the future, we are studying the possibility of licensing Argo AI development to other market participants. However, experts say that this software platform should not be too dependent on the used Ford hardware solutions, and to achieve this is not easy. In general, participants in the transaction, the terms of which the Argo AI get Ford's investment of $ 1 ppb over the next five years, is called a symbiosis of "hybrid business model": Argo AI will develop software and Ford will provide the hardware platform and will test it on production cars.
Interestingly, the development of Argo AI, Ford is not going to be used for "partial automation" of the cars, which will go off the assembly line until 2021. This entire project is aimed at creating robocar rather than the introduction of driver assistance systems of classic cars. Ford did not rule out attracting new investors for the development of Argo AI, and even thinking about the public offering of subsidiary shares. Recruitment has started not only in Pittsburgh, but also in California and Michigan.