Ford’s announcement Friday afternoon is part of a plan announced in August last year that would put an SAE level 4 autonomous vehicle into mass production as a ride-sharing service in 2021. “The next decade will be defined by the automation of the automobile,” Ford CEO Mark Fields said in a statement, according to Ars Technica.
The $1.0 billion investment over five years in Argo AI now gives Ford a lot of bragging rights to the best and brightest in the industry because Argo AI CEO Bryan Salesky worked on Google’s self-driving car program for years, while co-founder Peter Rander spent years with Uber’s program.
Ford has become a serious competitor in strengthening its position as a leader in the auto and mobility world, also acquiring lidar sensor-maker Velodyne and 3D-mapping company, Civil Maps. Ford also purchased a machine-vision company called SAIPS and entered into a licensing agreement with another, Nirenberg Neuroscience.
Ford’s Virtual Driver System
Argo AI’s main focus right now will be on the Virtual Driver System software that will be used by Fords autonomous vehicles. Argo AI says it is open to licensing the technology to other OEMs. One reason for the big investment into Argo AI is that there is the hope that this will attract talent, and on top of that, the way Argo is structured, it will be able to offer what Fields describes as, “competitive equity” to employees.
And with The Verge calling the competitiveness between the auto and tech industry an “arms race” to see who gets the knowledge and technological know-how first to bring self-driving cars out of the research phase and to market, it is going to remain a volatile environment.
Ford does not want to be outbid for top talent by Silicon Valley tech giants. Creating autonomous vehicles requires extensive knowledge and a set of specialized skills in computer vision, robotics, machine learning, and other complex fields, and the talent pool is not that large. So Ford is jumping into the “geeky” world of artificial intelligence technology before all the talent is grabbed up.
And the way Ford has chosen to do this is innovative all by itself, says Forbes. By Ford giving a major chunk of Argo to the owners, this allows Argo to sweeten the pot when hiring the best talent to work with them and to retain that talent. Elevating the automotive industry to the same level as those companies in Silicon Valley is going to make for some interesting stories this year.
