Ford leads self-driving tech pack, study finds

Its autonomous car plans are outpacing Tesla, Uber

Motor Co. is in the lead when it comes to benefiting from the coming age of autonomous vehicles.

That’s the conclusion of a study released Monday by Navigant Research, which sells its in-depth surveys of energy and transportation markets to suppliers, policymakers and other industry stakeholders.

The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker took the top spot by demonstrating that it has the strategic vision and execution capabilities to develop automated driving systems and deploy them across a range of mobility platforms.

Many automakers are targeting 2021 for a roll-out of self-driving cars that likely will be part of a ride-sharing network. Personal autonomous vehicle ownership is considered far off because of high purchase and maintenance costs.

In close second was General Motors, followed by Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler. Navigant’s 2015 survey did not include technology companies, who in the past few years had made big strides not only on the tech front but also in forging ties with automakers.

Waymo, Alphabet’s new name for its long-running Google car project, came in seventh, while Tesla was twelfth, and Uber was sixteenth. Apple was not included because it has never publicly acknowledged having an autonomous car research team.

Although Waymo’s project started nearly eight years ago, Navigant’s focus on both strategy and execution of selfdriving technology assigned low scores for its production strategy and its sales and marketing plans. Waymo currently has a partnership with Fiat Chrysler for the production of 100 Chrysler Pacifica minivans, which will help speed up Waymo’s tech development cycle.

Uber, meanwhile, was docked points for not having a good production strategy or technology. The company is currently battling in-house culture issues as well as fending off a lawsuit from Way-

mo charging that its tech is built off stolen Waymo data. Uber also scored low on staying power.

“It’s not clear there’s a clear path to profitability for ride-hailing companies,” said Sam Abuelsamid, one of the authors of Navigant’s study. “They may lose money because they have to pay drivers, but remember: They have no capital expenditures. What happens to their business model if they have to spend tens of billions on autonomous vehicles?”

Abuelsamid said it’s more likely that automakers will get into the ridehailing game than it is for Uber and Lyft to get into the auto manufacturing business.

Ford Motor, which was outside of the top five in a 2015 Navigant survey, raced to the fore based partly on a range of partnerships forged in the past year.

Those include a $150 million co-investment with Baidu in Velodyne, makers of light detection and ranging systems; an undisclosed investment in 3-D mapmakers Civil Maps; and a $1 billion bet on self-driving tech startup Argo AI. Ford also has invested in Chariot, a ride-sharing van network that conceivably could go autonomous.

Ford Motor has been testing a fleet of Fusions in real-world situations, including night testing in Arizona and snow testing in Michigan.