Ford sees DC as self-driving-car outpost
WASHINGTON — The black Ford Fusion hybrid with a tiara of laser sensors looped twice through a 4-mile stretch of a changing Washington, passing a trendy food hall and a sagging strip mall as it vacuumed up data to build a citywide network of selfdriving cars.
The map engineers inside the car last week were part of an advance team working with Ford, which plans to deploy a driverless fleet that will carry customers and make deliveries for businesses across all corners of the nation’s capital.
Automakers and technology companies touting safety and economic benefits from autonomous vehicles are racing to improve their systems and carve out real estate across the country, putting down stakes in cities from San Francisco to Boston as public proving grounds for technologies that remain distrusted by many.
In Ohio on Monday night, the Dublin City Council was expected to vote on a resolution that would allow the city to enter an agreement with DriveOhio to let the state agency, which is devoted to research on autonomous vehicles, bring them to the city.
In the District of Columbia, Mapping specialists from self-driving startup Argo AI drive an autonomous Ford Fusion in manual mode through northeastern Washington, D.C. On the roof are laser sensors gathering data for mapping. Ford is backing Argo AI with a $1 billion investment. Ford will begin testing selfdriving cars early next year and plans to launch commercially in Washington, Miami and other unnamed cities starting in 2021. That’s a longer timeline than some other companies and communities, a reality that leaders of Ford and the city both described as beneficial.
“We realized very quickly that we can launch a small number of cars in an area right away — but then not create a healthy business that helps the city,” said Sherif Marakby, president and chief executive of Ford Autonomous Vehicles.
Waymo, the company formed out of Google’s nearly decade-old self-driving car project, is already carrying selected families and transit employees in self-driving minivans in the Phoenix area, joined by safety chaperones in the back seat. The company said it plans to open a driverless service to the public in parts of Arizona by year’s end.
Brian Kenner, the District of Columbia’s deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said he’s pleased “frankly, to not be the tip of the spear, full on, in autonomous vehicles.”
District officials met with counterparts from Pittsburgh and representatives of Uber, as part of a multicity effort to share experiences, Kenner said. After a driverless Uber killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in March, both Pittsburgh and Uber “have taken at least a half step back” in their aggressive push to see the technology deployed, Kenner added.
“We appreciate being sort of in the 2.0 wave around this,” he said.
Ford said the District of Columbia’s openness to driverless operations gave Washington an advantage over lesswelcoming cities. City law requires a backup safety driver in autonomous cars, although officials said they would work, in coordination with Ford, to update those and other rules.
Last week, the mapping specialists from Argo AI, a self-driving startup that Ford is backing with a $1 billion investment, drove the autonomous Ford Fusion, in manual mode through northeastern Washington.
Using nine cameras and a pair of lidar units, which make precise measurements using laser beams, they recorded roads, curbs and streetlights. All those 3-D snapshots will be refined, augmented and used by the driverless car to place itself in the world.