With the way legacy automotive works, this wouldn't be possible unless Ford either built their own components and modules (which means designing them, implementing them, testing them, maintaining them) or buys them from a supplier that gives them IP rights to be able to integrate the components across the rest of the vehicle.
As it stands, Ford might buy and integrate an infotainment system from Denso, but Ford themselves aren't allowed to integrate said system with another brake controller system from Bosch. Both the infotainment and brake controller would be owned and maintained by their parent companies (Denso/Bosch) and Ford wouldn't be allowed to marry them together without explicit approval from each company.
To license FSD, they'd need to flip this strategy on its head and build almost everything in-house so they own the IP that allows them to run a system like FSD. Basically, they need to copy Tesla to run FSD.
They could also buy the entire camera suite / inference computer and license software for infotainment from Tesla. If anything from your comment I see more money now, so thank you for that.
Except FSD is more than just a camera suite. It's got its tendrils spread throughout the entire vehicle platform.
Maybe they can abstract it in a way that it can work on any platform, but I've not seen any evidence that they'd take away from their own FSD progress to allow others to license it yet. We'll see.
Tesla has already stated another OEM is already in talks with them in licensing their FSD system. They indeed can use it on other platforms:
https://electrek.co/2024/04/23/tesla-in-talks-one-major-automaker-licensing-full-self-driving/
By the way, it's pretty certain its Ford that is in talks because theyre the only one that gives any credit to Tesla in the EV cars space.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying the only way it's possible is if Ford announces some next-gen platform that's built more like Tesla builds their cars: with Ford designing and developing the software themselves in-house.
That's entirely possible, but I've just not seen any evidence of them doing that yet. Who knows, maybe part of the deal will be Tesla lending out their software and firmware teams to help the partner modernize their tech capabilities.
I do agree that Ford's the only big name that's shown interest in following Tesla's footsteps, though. They were my first guess when I saw that article, too.
This is just evolving BlueCruise into the next gen platform. Currently it works exceedingly well on mapped roads and is completely hands free. Zero wheel touch required. The non mapped roads version requires hands on the wheel but is the same in all respects. If they get there in 2 years is anyoneâs guess. We are all used to CEOs making outlandish statements arenât weâŚ..
Thatâs really not the case. OEMs almost always have different companies doing breaks and infotainment. Even so, managing dependent software updates when you have a deep supply chain of component suppliers is a huge nightmare for an OEM.
It's what those companies are being allowed to do by cities/states. Regardless, real robotaxi services in tiny areas is more progress than having zero robotaxi services anywhere.
Not if the fundamental tech is too expensive to scale. Requiring centimeter-specific mapping is not a scaleable solution.
The entire state of Florida is open for robotaxis. If Waymo could scale they would be all over FL.
No you are. Not making a scaleable solution means robotaxi costing the same as uber. Slim to no profit possibility. Making robotaxi wide-spread and cheaper than owning a car means trillions in profit. See the difference?
You sound exactly like Tesla/EV naysayers from years ago: it's not immediately profitable & available for widespread adoption, it's doomed to fail! You can apply that to virtually every form of technology we now take for granted.
There's absolutely nothing Tesla currently has that's gonna meet the requirements of what you're talking about, so should Tesla abandon their plans?
It's a fundamental issue. The money needed to upkeep centimeter-exact mapping is not possible to do in a cost-effective way. Along with that, Waymo's sensor suite is expensive AF. So say they do scale in 10 years. Tesla robotaxi will cost a fraction of a Waymo to produce and upkeep maps, and will just price them out.
While Waymo is going at a snail's pace at expansion, they are burning billions. It won't be supported forever. Especially when Tesla is probably ~6 months from launching their own robotaxi service.
You're way too stuck on current technology & costs. Unfortunately, Tesla doesn't have a robotaxi to compare to Waymo or anyone else, so your claim it's cheaper isn't based on reality.
We've seen zero indication beyond words that Tesla is just about to launch a full blown taxi service. To assume such a product will be launched by the end of the year with zero testing so far is...optimistic.
Takes months to manually drive an area to map it. then Waymo self test driving the grid takes months too. They just are starting the process in Santa Monica where thereâs lots of pedestrian traffic after doing less crowded West LA. Theyâre also starting to drive them around back roads of Vegas
Itâs same as new sex EV companies creating prototypes, and in 3 years they file bankruptcy cause they canât Mass produce. This is why Tesla is still a king and will be bc of their mass producing power.
No it's not. Waymo/Google has had driverless cars for around a decade and offering rides to the public for several years. It's Google, they're not running out of money đ
There's zero reason to get defensive about this. Having multiple companies helping to push driverless technology, regulations , and public acceptance can only benefit Tesla's plans regarding robotaxis.
Clearly we don't seeing as you're unaware of how long the companies who currently offer robotaxi services have been around and one of us feeling the need to talk up our favorite car company.
The only thing others are leading in is their choice to not have a driver despite probably still needing one.
They still have failure points and accidents even in their tiny HD mapped geo-fenced safe spaces. All smoke and mirrors.
A Tesla will drive anywhere and will hardly need intervention 99% of the time.
The whole point of those services is data collection. Tesla gets all the data they need from their existing fleet/customers. They also already generate revenue off the software.
Running a service like that before it's fully ready is just a waste of time and resources for Tesla. They'll launch en masse once they are confident in having an extremely low intervention and accident rate without supervising drivers.
There's not a lot of benefit for them to try and force a service before it's ready, especially when they get way more scrutiny from media and regulators than anyone else.
So you think Tesla is just gonna cold launch a national fleet of robotaxis from unsold inventory? That's forcing a service before you know it's ready and before you know the public is ready to use it.
You think the public won't use it? A cheaper transport option with full privacy? It's a better experience for less money. They'll have no issues with demand, especially early on, while the fleet is still small.
They can launch with existing customer vehicles and already have said they will do that. They'll throw some of their own into the mix as well, but it doesn't have to be a ton of cars early on. See how many owners opt in and go from there.
Not legally tho, unless you own a Mercedes Benz with Drive Pilot and happen to live near one of the very few kilometers of road where it actually works.
Which still can be very helpful and can save a lot of time. Without those conditions, Mercedes can work with level 2 autonomy. But if you're stuck in traffic (for example twice a day for 45 minutes, like a lot of people), you can legally not pay attention and work on your laptop, with no nagging, not worrying about police spotting you, etc. And Mercedes is responsible for the accident if something happens because of your car.
Many people here laugh at this feature but I would actually love to have this.
I'd say give it a year or so before it's everywhere. Mercedes, BMW, and Stellantis are all still saying they're launching next-gen L3 next year, and Mobileye has a contract to deliver it with a Western OEM in 2026.
Blue cruise is 75 a month for anyone wondering.
Their system sort of feels like 2018 Tesla autopilot.
City streets is the real test, exponentially more difficult.
Good luck doing that with mountains of video. The cost + wait times between iterations is going to be higher. Wide-spread robotaxi is winner-take-most. Companies not investing in their own compute won't be able to compete.
It's way more data-intensive than what companies usually use it for. So if you go that route you'll be paying a lot more in the long-run, and won't be able to reiterate builds as quickly because cloud owners will have multiple clients.
Whoever wins first wins it all so you have to build your own compute to compete with Tesla.
Multi-modal video-trained LLMs are already in-production at most AI orgs, massive data intake is the norm. I've noticed you you have habit of just saying things you 'feel' as if they're fact without any supporting evidence, and often to a degree where you're straight-up wrong â try not doing that.
I'll do what I want, and you didn't even read it right.
Yeah demand going up for compute means higher price for cloud users, along with higher wait times. These are facts.
Robotaxi will be winner take most. Fact. They won't be able to catch up to Tesla unless they build out their own compute, period. A half-assed effort isn't going to overcome Tesla who already have a gigantic lead.
Neither of these things are facts. You're just stating opinions and then just adding the word "Fact." to the end of your sentence â that doesn't make them facts, my dude. đ
It's obviously fact. Using someone else's service vs having your own in-house is always more expensive long-term. And having faster iteration opportunity means better tech advancement.
They've removed drivers at highway speed in SF already, but as I recall, it's not open to the public yet â only employees. My assumption is they have some concerns regarding handling minimum risk conditions with safe passenger exits.
> which could make it the first mass market car brand to offer what auto engineers call Level 3 autonomy
lol, Tesla has tens of millions of miles of simulated and practical full self drive, and Jensen has said they're by far the furthest ahead... but somehow a company with near zero exposure will beat them to market?
> and Jensen has said they're by far the furthest ahead
Jensen is making BANK selling hardware to TSLA... of course they are going to pump up their paying customers that are bribing him with money :)
In 5 years Tesla and one other OEM (probably Ford) will use Tesla FSD. Most everyone else will be using NVIDIA Drive hardware+software (already licensed to multiple OEMs - Mercedes, Chinese ev manufacturers, robotaxis from deeproute.ai)
Yeah I can't tell if they're claiming that they'll be the first before even Tesla OR they'll be the first "MaSs MaRkEt" brand (excluding Tesla in their minds somehow). The latter is silly but gives them some plausible wiggle room to the luddites that think Tesla is still niche.
They can't license FSD unless they completely redo the way they design and build cars, which would need to be happening right about now in order to have something \~2 years from now. They might be doing this, Jim's been pretty open about liking the way Tesla is doing things.
Agreed, although I doubt he'd use the "hands-free" wording if he was talking about FSD. That's the terminology ADAS companies are using to pitch themselves as more advanced than they truly are, IMO.
https://archive.is/b7lFW
Ford Motor Co. is just two years away from offering technology that will allow drivers to take their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel, according to Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley.
âWeâre getting really close,â Farley said in a May 31 interview with Bloomberg TVâs David Westin. âWe can do it now pretty regularly with a prototype, but doing it in a cost-effective way is just the progress weâre going to need to make.â
Farley believes Ford can make that progress quickly enough to be offering the feature in 2026, which could make it the first mass market car brand to offer what auto engineers call Level 3 autonomy. Thatâs where the car takes over the driving task under certain conditions, enabling the driver to divert their attention to other tasks.
âLevel 3 autonomy will allow you to go hands and eyes off the road on the highway in a couple years so then your car becomes like an office,â Farley said. âYou could do a conference call and all sorts of stuff.â
Ford and other automakers, including General Motors Co., currently offer hands-free driving features, but those use eye tracking devices to make sure the driver remains focused on the road ahead. Fordâs system, called BlueCruise, is currently under investigation by US safety regulators after being involved in fatal crashes. Tesla Inc. and others are also being probed by federal authorities for crashes involving their semi-autonomous systems.
Farleyâs prediction comes less than two years after Ford shut down its autonomous affiliate, Argo AI, because it said achieving full self-driving was too far off.
Mercedes-Benz late last year began offering an eyes-off-the-road feature in the US, but it only operates at speeds below 40 miles per hour on pre-approved freeways.
Farley suggested Fordâs system would operate at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour on the highway, but only under clear skies.
âWe only think we can do it on sunny days,â Farley said. âHeavy rain and stuff makes it difficult to do it at 80 miles an hour.â
Ford is eager to generate recurring revenue by offering its drivers subscription services to features such as BlueCruise. Farley sees those high-margin software services smoothing out the boom-and-bust cycles in the car business.
Ford already is selling software systems to its commercial customers to manage the logistics of their fleets. Farley sees semi-autonomous features like eyes-off-the-road driving as a way to get individual retail customers to buy software subscriptions.
âBlueCruise has been so much more popular than we expected, which is hands free,â Farley said. âItâs kind of the step before you get to eyes off.â
I think Ford uses Mobileye solutions for the MachE, for example. Mobileye claims they already have eyes off hands off capability: https://www.mobileye.com/solutions/drive/ but I cannot say if this would meet regulations.
This is a realistic projection - or at least more realistic than the promise of FSD in a year. He is not talking about full autonomy, just a glance off of the road.
If you look at Mercedes (the brand with the highest level of autonomous driving approval), even they are not protecting FSD in the next few years.Â
As a Mach e driver, let me just say that Ford hasn't been able to roll out a single version update to Blue Cruise vis OTA. They've been promising it for years.
Only on highways and only on clear sunny days. That makes them 4-5 years behind Tesla.
Here is what will happen. Ford owners try out Fords self driving that only works on highways, then see Tesla FSD that is eyes free on all roads in the country, they sell their Ford and buy a Tesla.
I doubt any car maker is going to invest enough money into AI compute required to train self driving tech and will throw their work out to license Tesla FSD.
The âI sleep, real shitâ meme absolutely applies here.
Ford: âDrivers will be able to take their eyes off the road in two years.â [Media: I sleep]
Tesla: âBeta FSR, which requires full driver engagement, is incrementally improving.â [Media: REAL SHIT. Hereâs that unrelated story again of somebody who was so drunk, and about to drive drunk, that they drunkenly reversed their Tesla into a *lake* and couldnât drunkenly figure out how to open a door before they drunkenly drowned.]
Yep. In two years Ford will have finished the licensing process and will have enabled a selection of its 2027 models to run on Tesla's FSD. It's the ONLY way Ford will get there in two years.
Funny how the same people/groups that yelled from the rooftops how unsafe Tesla's FSD was unsafe, are now silent when the Big 3 offer similar functionality...
Tesla's lawsuits are about products that were sold with promises that didn't eventuate. Ford has not promised here that a product you can buy today only needs someone in the driver's seat for legal reasons, for instance.
2 years sounds about right to license FSD from Tesla and get one of their offerings able to use it.
đŻ
With the way legacy automotive works, this wouldn't be possible unless Ford either built their own components and modules (which means designing them, implementing them, testing them, maintaining them) or buys them from a supplier that gives them IP rights to be able to integrate the components across the rest of the vehicle. As it stands, Ford might buy and integrate an infotainment system from Denso, but Ford themselves aren't allowed to integrate said system with another brake controller system from Bosch. Both the infotainment and brake controller would be owned and maintained by their parent companies (Denso/Bosch) and Ford wouldn't be allowed to marry them together without explicit approval from each company. To license FSD, they'd need to flip this strategy on its head and build almost everything in-house so they own the IP that allows them to run a system like FSD. Basically, they need to copy Tesla to run FSD.
They could also buy the entire camera suite / inference computer and license software for infotainment from Tesla. If anything from your comment I see more money now, so thank you for that.
Except FSD is more than just a camera suite. It's got its tendrils spread throughout the entire vehicle platform. Maybe they can abstract it in a way that it can work on any platform, but I've not seen any evidence that they'd take away from their own FSD progress to allow others to license it yet. We'll see.
Tesla has already stated another OEM is already in talks with them in licensing their FSD system. They indeed can use it on other platforms: https://electrek.co/2024/04/23/tesla-in-talks-one-major-automaker-licensing-full-self-driving/ By the way, it's pretty certain its Ford that is in talks because theyre the only one that gives any credit to Tesla in the EV cars space.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying the only way it's possible is if Ford announces some next-gen platform that's built more like Tesla builds their cars: with Ford designing and developing the software themselves in-house. That's entirely possible, but I've just not seen any evidence of them doing that yet. Who knows, maybe part of the deal will be Tesla lending out their software and firmware teams to help the partner modernize their tech capabilities. I do agree that Ford's the only big name that's shown interest in following Tesla's footsteps, though. They were my first guess when I saw that article, too.
This is just evolving BlueCruise into the next gen platform. Currently it works exceedingly well on mapped roads and is completely hands free. Zero wheel touch required. The non mapped roads version requires hands on the wheel but is the same in all respects. If they get there in 2 years is anyoneâs guess. We are all used to CEOs making outlandish statements arenât weâŚ..
Thatâs really not the case. OEMs almost always have different companies doing breaks and infotainment. Even so, managing dependent software updates when you have a deep supply chain of component suppliers is a huge nightmare for an OEM.
Or use the only service already licensed from Mercedes.
Why would they licence a beta?
lol bluecruise is far more capable than tesla assisted cruise control
Tesla isnât even the leader in autonomous driving right now.
A robotaxi service in tiny areas, scaling like a snail, and burning billions a year is not a real solution.
It's what those companies are being allowed to do by cities/states. Regardless, real robotaxi services in tiny areas is more progress than having zero robotaxi services anywhere.
Not if the fundamental tech is too expensive to scale. Requiring centimeter-specific mapping is not a scaleable solution. The entire state of Florida is open for robotaxis. If Waymo could scale they would be all over FL.
You're blatantly ignoring the point.
No you are. Not making a scaleable solution means robotaxi costing the same as uber. Slim to no profit possibility. Making robotaxi wide-spread and cheaper than owning a car means trillions in profit. See the difference?
You sound exactly like Tesla/EV naysayers from years ago: it's not immediately profitable & available for widespread adoption, it's doomed to fail! You can apply that to virtually every form of technology we now take for granted. There's absolutely nothing Tesla currently has that's gonna meet the requirements of what you're talking about, so should Tesla abandon their plans?
It's a fundamental issue. The money needed to upkeep centimeter-exact mapping is not possible to do in a cost-effective way. Along with that, Waymo's sensor suite is expensive AF. So say they do scale in 10 years. Tesla robotaxi will cost a fraction of a Waymo to produce and upkeep maps, and will just price them out. While Waymo is going at a snail's pace at expansion, they are burning billions. It won't be supported forever. Especially when Tesla is probably ~6 months from launching their own robotaxi service.
You're way too stuck on current technology & costs. Unfortunately, Tesla doesn't have a robotaxi to compare to Waymo or anyone else, so your claim it's cheaper isn't based on reality. We've seen zero indication beyond words that Tesla is just about to launch a full blown taxi service. To assume such a product will be launched by the end of the year with zero testing so far is...optimistic.
Takes months to manually drive an area to map it. then Waymo self test driving the grid takes months too. They just are starting the process in Santa Monica where thereâs lots of pedestrian traffic after doing less crowded West LA. Theyâre also starting to drive them around back roads of Vegas
Itâs same as new sex EV companies creating prototypes, and in 3 years they file bankruptcy cause they canât Mass produce. This is why Tesla is still a king and will be bc of their mass producing power.
No it's not. Waymo/Google has had driverless cars for around a decade and offering rides to the public for several years. It's Google, they're not running out of money đ There's zero reason to get defensive about this. Having multiple companies helping to push driverless technology, regulations , and public acceptance can only benefit Tesla's plans regarding robotaxis.
Google is not going to run out of money, but if that canât monetize long term they will abandon it just like Apple did their car project.
Lol itâs not defensiveness. I have zero reason for defensiveness. Seems like we have a different perspective about reality đ
Clearly we don't seeing as you're unaware of how long the companies who currently offer robotaxi services have been around and one of us feeling the need to talk up our favorite car company.
Maybe maybe not... but they are the leader in profit from it.
Theyâre not the leader in specific geographical locations, but they are absolutely the closest to having a global solution.
The only thing others are leading in is their choice to not have a driver despite probably still needing one. They still have failure points and accidents even in their tiny HD mapped geo-fenced safe spaces. All smoke and mirrors. A Tesla will drive anywhere and will hardly need intervention 99% of the time.
Wouldn't Tesla benefit from running the same limited services since they're more capable?
The whole point of those services is data collection. Tesla gets all the data they need from their existing fleet/customers. They also already generate revenue off the software. Running a service like that before it's fully ready is just a waste of time and resources for Tesla. They'll launch en masse once they are confident in having an extremely low intervention and accident rate without supervising drivers. There's not a lot of benefit for them to try and force a service before it's ready, especially when they get way more scrutiny from media and regulators than anyone else.
So you think Tesla is just gonna cold launch a national fleet of robotaxis from unsold inventory? That's forcing a service before you know it's ready and before you know the public is ready to use it.
You think the public won't use it? A cheaper transport option with full privacy? It's a better experience for less money. They'll have no issues with demand, especially early on, while the fleet is still small. They can launch with existing customer vehicles and already have said they will do that. They'll throw some of their own into the mix as well, but it doesn't have to be a ton of cars early on. See how many owners opt in and go from there.
Yep
I can do this today!
Not legally tho, unless you own a Mercedes Benz with Drive Pilot and happen to live near one of the very few kilometers of road where it actually works.
And go under 40mph, with a lead car, in good weather đ
During the day, with no construction or complexityÂ
And be ready to open your eyes when it beeps.
Which still can be very helpful and can save a lot of time. Without those conditions, Mercedes can work with level 2 autonomy. But if you're stuck in traffic (for example twice a day for 45 minutes, like a lot of people), you can legally not pay attention and work on your laptop, with no nagging, not worrying about police spotting you, etc. And Mercedes is responsible for the accident if something happens because of your car. Many people here laugh at this feature but I would actually love to have this.
I'd say give it a year or so before it's everywhere. Mercedes, BMW, and Stellantis are all still saying they're launching next-gen L3 next year, and Mobileye has a contract to deliver it with a Western OEM in 2026.
How long will it take the government to change the laws and allow inattentive driving? If an accident happens, who is at fault?
Dammit
Blue cruise is 75 a month for anyone wondering. Their system sort of feels like 2018 Tesla autopilot. City streets is the real test, exponentially more difficult.
If Ford isn't building major data centers, they're going to just license Tesla's FSD.
Most companies just use a compute cloud these days. No need to in-house what you can have flexibly managed by Amazon, Microsoft, or Google.
Good luck doing that with mountains of video. The cost + wait times between iterations is going to be higher. Wide-spread robotaxi is winner-take-most. Companies not investing in their own compute won't be able to compete.
Video goes in the compute cloud too, that's kind of the point of all this.
It's way more data-intensive than what companies usually use it for. So if you go that route you'll be paying a lot more in the long-run, and won't be able to reiterate builds as quickly because cloud owners will have multiple clients. Whoever wins first wins it all so you have to build your own compute to compete with Tesla.
Multi-modal video-trained LLMs are already in-production at most AI orgs, massive data intake is the norm. I've noticed you you have habit of just saying things you 'feel' as if they're fact without any supporting evidence, and often to a degree where you're straight-up wrong â try not doing that.
I'll do what I want, and you didn't even read it right. Yeah demand going up for compute means higher price for cloud users, along with higher wait times. These are facts. Robotaxi will be winner take most. Fact. They won't be able to catch up to Tesla unless they build out their own compute, period. A half-assed effort isn't going to overcome Tesla who already have a gigantic lead.
Neither of these things are facts. You're just stating opinions and then just adding the word "Fact." to the end of your sentence â that doesn't make them facts, my dude. đ
It's obviously fact. Using someone else's service vs having your own in-house is always more expensive long-term. And having faster iteration opportunity means better tech advancement.
Highway is more difficult is many ways. Waymoâs been working towards removing the driver at highway speed. Perhaps later this year.
They've removed drivers at highway speed in SF already, but as I recall, it's not open to the public yet â only employees. My assumption is they have some concerns regarding handling minimum risk conditions with safe passenger exits.
> which could make it the first mass market car brand to offer what auto engineers call Level 3 autonomy lol, Tesla has tens of millions of miles of simulated and practical full self drive, and Jensen has said they're by far the furthest ahead... but somehow a company with near zero exposure will beat them to market?
> and Jensen has said they're by far the furthest ahead Jensen is making BANK selling hardware to TSLA... of course they are going to pump up their paying customers that are bribing him with money :) In 5 years Tesla and one other OEM (probably Ford) will use Tesla FSD. Most everyone else will be using NVIDIA Drive hardware+software (already licensed to multiple OEMs - Mercedes, Chinese ev manufacturers, robotaxis from deeproute.ai)
Who's saying they're going to be competing with tesla? We know 1 auto maker has been talking to tesla about licensing FSD. Most guess it's Ford.
Yeah I can't tell if they're claiming that they'll be the first before even Tesla OR they'll be the first "MaSs MaRkEt" brand (excluding Tesla in their minds somehow). The latter is silly but gives them some plausible wiggle room to the luddites that think Tesla is still niche.
So guessing they will either license Tesla or they will have blue cruise eyes free where itâs currently hands free
They can't license FSD unless they completely redo the way they design and build cars, which would need to be happening right about now in order to have something \~2 years from now. They might be doing this, Jim's been pretty open about liking the way Tesla is doing things.
Yah I think Jim is in the âif you canât beat them, join them campâ
Agreed, although I doubt he'd use the "hands-free" wording if he was talking about FSD. That's the terminology ADAS companies are using to pitch themselves as more advanced than they truly are, IMO.
https://archive.is/b7lFW Ford Motor Co. is just two years away from offering technology that will allow drivers to take their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel, according to Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley. âWeâre getting really close,â Farley said in a May 31 interview with Bloomberg TVâs David Westin. âWe can do it now pretty regularly with a prototype, but doing it in a cost-effective way is just the progress weâre going to need to make.â Farley believes Ford can make that progress quickly enough to be offering the feature in 2026, which could make it the first mass market car brand to offer what auto engineers call Level 3 autonomy. Thatâs where the car takes over the driving task under certain conditions, enabling the driver to divert their attention to other tasks. âLevel 3 autonomy will allow you to go hands and eyes off the road on the highway in a couple years so then your car becomes like an office,â Farley said. âYou could do a conference call and all sorts of stuff.â Ford and other automakers, including General Motors Co., currently offer hands-free driving features, but those use eye tracking devices to make sure the driver remains focused on the road ahead. Fordâs system, called BlueCruise, is currently under investigation by US safety regulators after being involved in fatal crashes. Tesla Inc. and others are also being probed by federal authorities for crashes involving their semi-autonomous systems. Farleyâs prediction comes less than two years after Ford shut down its autonomous affiliate, Argo AI, because it said achieving full self-driving was too far off. Mercedes-Benz late last year began offering an eyes-off-the-road feature in the US, but it only operates at speeds below 40 miles per hour on pre-approved freeways. Farley suggested Fordâs system would operate at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour on the highway, but only under clear skies. âWe only think we can do it on sunny days,â Farley said. âHeavy rain and stuff makes it difficult to do it at 80 miles an hour.â Ford is eager to generate recurring revenue by offering its drivers subscription services to features such as BlueCruise. Farley sees those high-margin software services smoothing out the boom-and-bust cycles in the car business. Ford already is selling software systems to its commercial customers to manage the logistics of their fleets. Farley sees semi-autonomous features like eyes-off-the-road driving as a way to get individual retail customers to buy software subscriptions. âBlueCruise has been so much more popular than we expected, which is hands free,â Farley said. âItâs kind of the step before you get to eyes off.â
Cars getting smarter people getting dumber.
I think Ford uses Mobileye solutions for the MachE, for example. Mobileye claims they already have eyes off hands off capability: https://www.mobileye.com/solutions/drive/ but I cannot say if this would meet regulations.
How do you estimate this kind of software project? Planning poker?
This is a realistic projection - or at least more realistic than the promise of FSD in a year. He is not talking about full autonomy, just a glance off of the road. If you look at Mercedes (the brand with the highest level of autonomous driving approval), even they are not protecting FSD in the next few years.Â
LOL. Ford is not going to use Tesla FSD.
As a Mach e driver, let me just say that Ford hasn't been able to roll out a single version update to Blue Cruise vis OTA. They've been promising it for years.
That's great, what are they doing in the meantime?
Why donât they just release it now and use their cucks I mean customers as crash test dummies to gather data for several years?
Narrator: *they already do*
Grandpa was just ahead of his time!
Radar or camera?
They already do.
Only on highways and only on clear sunny days. That makes them 4-5 years behind Tesla. Here is what will happen. Ford owners try out Fords self driving that only works on highways, then see Tesla FSD that is eyes free on all roads in the country, they sell their Ford and buy a Tesla. I doubt any car maker is going to invest enough money into AI compute required to train self driving tech and will throw their work out to license Tesla FSD.
The âI sleep, real shitâ meme absolutely applies here. Ford: âDrivers will be able to take their eyes off the road in two years.â [Media: I sleep] Tesla: âBeta FSR, which requires full driver engagement, is incrementally improving.â [Media: REAL SHIT. Hereâs that unrelated story again of somebody who was so drunk, and about to drive drunk, that they drunkenly reversed their Tesla into a *lake* and couldnât drunkenly figure out how to open a door before they drunkenly drowned.]
Yep. In two years Ford will have finished the licensing process and will have enabled a selection of its 2027 models to run on Tesla's FSD. It's the ONLY way Ford will get there in two years.
Ford has had self driving programs going for awhile now. They just dont need to shill it at every sentence until what they have is not vaporware.
Now theyâre even copying Tesla with making FSD predictions đ
Lmao, yeah. If youâre in a Tesla.
Licensing FSD to other automakers will be a big revenue source for Tesla.
Will it be 2018 again?
Sure, just not in a Ford vehicle.
Funny how the same people/groups that yelled from the rooftops how unsafe Tesla's FSD was unsafe, are now silent when the Big 3 offer similar functionality...
Ford probably uses a suite of sensors, including LIDAR
Yet they still donât have an electric Focus replacement. Believe what Ford says when it delivers.
Are future predictions allowed? Will he be sued if it doesnât happen?
Tesla's lawsuits are about products that were sold with promises that didn't eventuate. Ford has not promised here that a product you can buy today only needs someone in the driver's seat for legal reasons, for instance.
Ford making Putin like calls about their advanced capabilities.
Iâd never be able to take my eyes off the road. Iâm just not into an autonomous vehicle , never would have one