“Ford and Google to work together on self-propelled car”

Posted on 22-12-2015 at 9:15 by CasperH – 26 Comments”

Ford en Google werken samen aan autonoom rijden
It increasingly seems that the zoekmachinereus and one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers to cooperate on a long-term relationship on self-propelled cars.

The approach is to for a considerable length of time to work, reports a source close to the project. The expectation is that in the week of January 4, an official announcement from the two companies follows, during the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The current CEO of Ford (Mark Fields) gives in any case a press conference on 5 January. Also few other executives from Ford will be present, all of the people involved in the departments of “connected vehicles” or “research and advanced engineering”.

At this time, deny both Ford and Google to comment on the possible deal, but the cross-pollination is well underway. Google, for example, has two former bosses of Ford in her eindbazenteam, including former Ford CEO Alan Mulally. Also the CEO of the autonomous driving project at Google, John Krafcik, has a long history with Ford. He worked there for 14 years before joining TrueCar, and Hyundai started to work.

Or Ford is a specific car for autonomous driving will develop, or that it is the technology of Google is going to use in existing models is not yet clear. However, it is certain that Ford next year in California are testing with autonomous cars, on the basis of the past few years, self-developed technique. In that case it is a stand-alone version of the Ford Fusion Hybrid, the American flavour of the Ford Mondeo Hybrid. Moreover report sources that the deal is non-exclusive, which means that Google also collaborations with other automotive manufacturers may enter into in the future.

The autonomous car is Google to know, incidentally, is built by Roush, a company with close ties with Ford. Google is increasingly looking for partners that cars would be equipped with their technology, instead of the previously adopted plan to own cars to build.