Ford Focuses on Less Aggressive Self-Driving Targets With 'Latitude AI' Division
Ford this week announced a new subisidiary, dubbed Latitude AI, that will focus on autonomous driving technology.
Ford envisions its driving tech taking over during "tedious, stressful, and unpleasant" times, like bumper-to-bumper traffic or long stretches of highway, and "ultimately over time giving our customers some of their day back," says(Opens in a new window) Doug Field, chief advanced product development and technology officer at Ford Motor Company.
Ford describes Latitude AI as an extension of existing autonomous driving efforts, including its BlueCruise hands-free highway driving system. It will also absorb 550 people who used to work for Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup backed by Ford and Volkswagen Group that shut down last year. The work will support "Ford’s strategic shift last year to focus on automated driving technologies for personally owned vehicles," it says.
The Argo AI shutdown highlights the challenges that automakers face in developing Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). As Ford noted(Opens in a new window) in October, it invested in Argo AI because it anticipated being able to bring Level 4 ADAS technology broadly to market by 2021.
"We’re optimistic about a future for L4 ADAS, but profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off and we won’t necessarily have to create that technology ourselves," Ford CEO Jim Farley said at the time.
As a result, Ford switched its focus from the Level 4 ADAS being developed by Argo AI to Level 2 and Level 3 technologies. Ford BlueCruise offers Level 2 automation, which means vehicles can take over steering, acceleration, and braking in certain situations, but still require a human driver to pay attention and take control as needed.
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