Ford cruises to head of self-driving car pack
Study: Tech trails in plans to commercialize autonomous vehicles
Ford Motor is in pole position 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 indepth surveys of energy and transportation markets to suppliers, policymakers and other industry stakeholders.
The Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker took the top spot by demonstrating it has the strategic vision and execution capabilities to both develop automated driving systems as well as deploy them across a range of platforms.
Many automakers are targeting 2021 for a roll-out of autonomous vehicles that likely will be part of a ride-sharing network. Widespread personal ownership of autonomous vehicles is considered far off due to high purchase and maintenance costs.
“Many traditional OEMs were initially skeptical about the commercial prospects for automated driving,” Navigant’s study says. “Most notable was Ford under its previous CEO Alan Mulally, who frequently spoke publicly about how people actually enjoy driving. However, through a combination of strategic investments and development of supporting business models, Ford and other OEMs have begun to move to the forefront.”
In close second was General Motors, followed by Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler. Navigant’s previous survey, in 2015, did not include technology companies, who in the past few years have 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 in the most recent study, Tesla was 12th and Uber 16th. 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 self-driving tech 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 for not having a good production strategy or technology. The company currently is battling in- house culture issues as well as fending off a lawsuit from Waymo charging that its LiDAR 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,” says 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?”
Ford Motor, outside of the top five in the 2015 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 (LiDAR); an undisclosed investment in 3D mapmakers Civil Maps; and a $1 billion bet on self-driving tech start-up Argo AI. Ford also has invested in Chariot, a ridesharing van network that conceivably could go autonomous.
“I’d call this an 11-year overnight success story,” Raj Nair, Ford Motor’s chief technology officer, last week told USA TODAY, citing as a starting point Ford’s entry into the early DARPA Grand Challenge for robotic cars.
Nair acknowledged that ridehailing as a business looks very attractive “if you automate the driver, because then the value proposition looks very different.”
Ford has been testing a fleet of Fusions in real-world situations, including night-testing in Arizona as well as snow testing in Michigan. Nair says the company still plans to roll out autonomous vehicles in 2021, but they would be SAE Level 4 vehicles, one level down from full autonomy.
“It’s not clear there’s a clear path to profitability for ridehailing companies.” Sam Abuelsamid, one of the authors of Navigant’s study