The maker of Ultimate Driving Machines doesn’t see selling the ultimate riding machine soon. The company is testing completely self-driving cars that they have developed with partner Intel Corp., which acquired sensor maker Mobileye, and with German parts maker Continental AG. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV recently joined the partnership, which plans to have self-driving technology in production vehicles by 2021.
The self-driving BMWs aren’t ready for the highways, BMW Chief Finance Officer Nicolas Peter said at a press event in Detroit. “This technology requires, from our perspective, some more time to have really fully automated cars on the road,” Peter said. There are currently about 1,000 people on the company’s research and development team.
No one can count Toyota Motor Corp. out. The company started developing self-parking technology in 1999 and installed it in the Prius in Japan in 2003, enabling the car to park with no input from the driver.
Toyota kept mum about capabilities until CES in January, when the company showed off a boxy shuttle concept called e-Palette. The Japanese automaker can make the self-driving shuttle in three sizes and it will debut publicly at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 as a ride-hailing shuttle, said Gill Pratt, who runs Toyota Research Institute.
Still, Toyota’s message was one of patience. When Toyota tests its self-driving car in 2020, it may not have a driver—or it may still have two people minding the front seats and the controls, Pratt said.
He thinks a lot of carmakers and tech companies are hyping the true state of self-driving vehicles. “We will get there,” Pratt said, “but I can’t tell you when.”
Ford Motor Co. has been considered a laggard, especially since former CEO Mark Fields was fired last year, in part for not having a cohesive vision for autonomy and future mobility. But it’s not fair to say Ford is flat-footed. The company gets its technology from Argo AI, the artificial intelligence company in Pittsburgh that Ford paid $1 billion to take a significant stake last year. That investment brought in very good capabilities, said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst with Navigant Research.
The Argo team has a strong lineage. The startup is the brainchild of Bryan Salesky, who was director of hardware development of what is now Waymo, and Peter Rander, who was engineering lead at the Uber Advanced Technologies Group. Salesky’s experience dates back to the beginning of self-driving cars: He was senior software engineer on the winning team in the 2007 autonomous vehicle challenge funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).
Ford is now testing its third-generation Fusion sedan with Argo’s technology. Even with Argo, however, Ford got a late start. When Ford bought the startup in February 2017, the company had few employees and Salesky spent a year staffing up.
The plan is to have self-driving cars with Level 4 capability in 2021, said Sherif Markaby, Ford’s vice president of autonomous vehicles and electrification. The car will be purpose-built for autonomy that has no steering wheel or pedals. While Ford is a couple of years behind GM and Waymo, the company is experimenting with Domino’s Pizza to deliver pies and with Postmates to deliver other cargo. Ford is also preparing a Michigan factory to make autonomous vehicles.