BrandedLogoDesign Review: Ford invests in start-up for self-propelled cars

Ford is investing a billion dollars in the AI ​​company Argo AI, which is specialized in AI. With the help of the start-up, the Autobauer wants to develop a new software platform for robotic trucks.

Ford is in the running for the development of self-propelled cars a billion dollars in the start-up of a former Google developer. The second-largest US car dealer will distribute the investment over the next five years, taking over the majority of the company Argo AI from Pittsburgh, which specializes in artificial intelligence. Ford plans to launch autonomous vehicles on the road in the year 2021, just like other automakers.

Ford announced Friday that they wanted to use Argo to develop a new software platform for robotic trucks. This technology could then possibly be licensed to other companies.

Argo was founded by Brian Salesky, who was responsible for the hardware of Google robotic cars, and a leading developer of software for autonomous driving at Uber, Peter Rander. The service agent developed his own robotic robot technology and joined the department of the University of Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where Salesky and Rander were once.

Asked as never before: specialists for autonomous mobility

While the big manufacturers are pushing up the pace in the development of self-propelled cars, top developers, who are self-employed, are buzzing. The Ford rival General Motors took over the start-up cruise for about 600 million dollars last year. Over 680 million dollars for the only months-old start-up Otto, which developed technology for self-propelled trucks. Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, a pioneer of Google's robotic vehicle program, is now working on self-propelled cars at Uber.

Also the former head designer of Google cars, Chris Urmson, and the former head of the "Autopilot" program at Tesla, Sterling Anderson, now want to elaborate their own technology in a start-up. However, they were sued by Tesla.

At the same time, in addition to motorists and tech companies, industry suppliers also work on technology for autonomous vehicles.

Ford is working hard to get ahead in the race for the car of the future. To this end, SAIPS, a company specializing in the development of self-learning machines, was already bought from Israel and invested 75 million dollars in Velodyne, a developer of laser radars.

In addition, Ford plans to double the number of employees in Silicon Valley by the end of 2017 to around 260. In addition, the Autoverse is also heavily based on electric and hybrid drives - by 2020, the development of 13 new models will be worth 4.5 billion dollars. The share of such vehicles in the total offer is to increase from currently 13 to 40 per cent.