The age of automation is upon us and the next phase of this revolution – with all the insurance issues that it brings – may be just less than five years away.
Autonomous cars may become ubiquitous in the near future as another global carmaker intends to have its own fleet of self-driving vehicles.
In an interview with
Bloomberg Television, Ford Motor Co. said it will launch its autonomous cars by 2021. The plan matches the ambitious timeframe of rival company BMW.
“We’re going to start mass-producing a fully autonomous vehicle we call Level 4 vehicle, which means it won’t have a steering wheel, gas pedal or brake pedal,” Ford CEO Mark Fields told the news agency.
“It will start fairly modest,” Fields added. “But we see it growing over time and being a very good business for us and also providing a lot of societal benefits for folks.”
Fields said the first applications will be either ride-hailing or ride-sharing service in major cities.
“There will be a growing per cent of the industry that will be fully autonomous vehicles,” Fields also told
BBC in an interview.
Ford has invested US$75 million in a leading advanced radar system maker to speed up its production of driverless vehicles,
Bloomberg reported. It is also investing in or teaming up with four start-ups on autonomous car development.
The US motor giant is expanding its autonomous car development as it tries to race Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Uber and other carmakers that have ventured into the development of self-driving vehicles.
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