The streets of some cities in the U.S. have already been tracks for different autonomous vehicles and now Ford’s self-driving cars will be tested in California.
- Ford will begin testing the Fusion on roads in 2016
- There are some states which approved self-driving car tests
- Ford has 25 mobility experiments the company is working on
The tests will start in 2016 on Ford Fusion as announced on Tuesday. This is the fully autonomous hybrid car from Ford. Another company that has been testing its self-driving cars on California roads is Google. They have been doing it since 2009.
There are also other states and cities which have approved the legislation which allows companies to test self-driving cars. Some of them are Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, although there is no special law for it there.
Ford has already been testing this technology for about 10 years now and this year they tested the fully autonomous car at Mcity, becoming the first automaker to test such a car in Michigan.
The tests taking place in California will represent the launch of the “Smart Mobility” plan. The plan refers to the opening of a research center which includes 100 engineers and scientists and is located in Palo Alto. The researchers come from all over the world, from countries like Germany, Australia or China. All of them are experts in one of these three sectors: technology, automotive engineering and automotive design.
The Ford Fusion first came to light in 2013. Ever since then, the company has been continuously working on it and they have now brought the car to the phase of “advanced engineering”. In this phase they are working at making the computing technologies feasible.
But Ford is not working only on cars. The aim of the company is to facilitate mobility of both users and employees. This is why they are experimenting with ride-sharing and car-hailing apps. Moreover, they are also working on the development of e-bicycles. They have recently announced the launch of an application similar to Uber and a shuttle service which is meant to help employees to get around faster for work.
Ford has a total of 25 mobility experiments which range from car-sharing and applications that help you find parking spots. The development process of these apps goes pretty fast and some of them are already in the pilot phase.
Image source: www.bing.com
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.