Ford creates new unit to develop semi-autonomous driving tech

Ford is forming a new unit to focus on semi-autonomous features and is hiring about one-quarter of the workers from its former self-driving affiliate Argo AI.

The wholly-owned subsidiary, known as Latitude AI, will be based in Pittsburgh, Argo’s former home, Ford said on Thursday. The new unit will focus on “developing a hands-free, eyes-off-the-road automated driving system for millions of vehicles”.

The carmaker is hiring about 550 employees from Argo, the self-driving start-up Ford and Volkswagen shut down in October. The workers will focus on technology such as BlueCruise, the carmaker’s hands-free driving feature it says has logged more than 80-million kilometres of use.

“The deep experience and talent in our Latitude team will help us accelerate the development of new automated driving technology,” Doug Field, Ford’s chief advanced product development and technology officer, said.

Ford and Volkswagen jettisoned Argo after determining it would take too long to realise a return on the billions they invested in the self-driving start-up. Ford took a $2.7bn (R48.9bn) write-down on its investment last year. Argo had more than 2,000 workers in July last year.

Argo’s demise showed how attitudes about self-driving technology have swiftly changed. The idea of free-range robotaxis navigating congested cities now is seen as a distant dream.

Ford says Latitude will focus on near term-automated technology that assists human drivers, but doesn’t replace them entirely with robots.

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