Ford to Test Autonomous Vehicles City by City, Working on Miami Pilot, Engineer Tells Investors
Ford autonomous commercial vehicle efforts will start “city by city,” Chris Brewer, chief engineer of its autonomous-driving program, told an Evercore ISI investment conference Tuesday, standing by the company's forecasts to begin commercial deployments in 2021. In each city, “we’ll…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
have a geo-fenced area that we feel comfortable we can operate in safely,” said Brewer. Ford on day one won’t “pop a hundred thousand vehicles” on the road. Once demonstrated the technology works, “you have to feel comfortable that you can safely deploy,” he said. “You need to have a regulatory environment that’s ready to accept it, and you have to have customers who believe it’s going to work.” The plan is to run an autonomous-driving “pilot” next year in Miami, where the automaker is “mapping the geo-fenced area" and working with partners like Domino’s and food-delivery service Postmates, the engineer said.