California roadways are starting to get crowded with autonomous vehicles.
Even though the first retail self-driving vehicles aren’t expected to roll into showrooms until 2020, at the earliest, a growing number of automakers have begun testing their technology out on public roads. And Ford Motor Co. is the latest to get a permit from the Golden State, one of the first to create a special license for autonomous vehicles.
Starting next month, Ford will start testing a specially modified version of its familiar Fusion Hybrid sedan on the streets near its new Silicon Valley research center. It’s already been using a simulated urban setting, dubbed Mcity, set up by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Ford joins a long list of automakers who have already been licensed by California, including BMW, Daimler, Honda, Nissan and Tesla. But one of the most aggressive autonomous vehicle testing programs is operated by high-tech firm Google. It has been running a variety of modified production cars, such as the Toyota Prius, and recently began rolling out the first in a planned fleet of 100 custom “Google Cars.”
Ford’s program will be more limited, the maker said. At least initially, it will use just one Fusion Hybrid based out of its Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto. That facility opened earlier this year with just 15 employees but has rapidly expanded to 100 staff members.
“We’re attracting top talent from around the world to join our team in Silicon Valley, including employees from local technology companies and universities who want to make people’s lives better by changing the way the world moves,” said Ford CEO Mark Fields during a visit to the center on Tuesday.
Ford is taking a cautious approach with its autonomous research, in part, to make sure that it is comfortable with the way its technology will perform in real-world settings. The Mcity center in Ann Arbor, Michigan is a detailed mock-up of a real city, complete with stop signs, pedestrian crossings and freeway on and off-ramps. But officials there emphasize that if there’s a problem in testing there’s no risk to the public.
Ford says it will continue to run digital simulations of its technology, among other things creating “virtual interaction(s) between an autonomous car and pedestrians, replicating real-world situations to better understand and develop responses to some of the unexpected things that can happen on the road.”
That’s something that has become apparent during Google’s far more extensive autonomous vehicle testing program. To date, its cars have been involved in at least 16 known collisions, all minor and, according to police, all caused by the other driver. But the crashes have revealed some of the potential challenges manufacturers face in bringing autonomous technology to the real world.
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