Self driving cars, Ford probably in panic mode

cnbc.com

6 points·deepGem··8 comments

While their argument probably still stands it seems they should have mentioned Ford's recent investment of $1 billion USD over 5 yrs in the self-driving car startup Argo [1]. I haven't been able to really dig up any details on how far along Argo is though.

[1] https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2017...

BMW: 638 miles driven, 638 miles/disengagement

That's weird.

Good catch. There must be some typo. Doesn't this mean there's a zero error rate. Seems practically impossible, at least with the current tech.

Unless it meant they are 2nd in miles driven and stopped "publishing" or driving to not reveal too much.

Or they've only done one test (that they'll share), and it went 638 mi before disengaging?

Or a single error in 638 miles.

Elsewhere in the article "disengagement" is defined as "a human driver has to take over", seemingly excluding natural stops.

> But what's even more significant is how much farther Waymo cars can go before a human driver has to take over. For Waymo, one of these so-called disengagements happened, on average, every 5,127 miles.

The data they are basing these arguments on seems rather suspect. Wouldn't Ford be doing the bulk of it's testing in Michigan?

Surely the data Tesla is collecting from it's production cars on the road also counts for something too.

And actually Ford is investing in Argo in Pittsburgh, which is a very new self-driving car startup.

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