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By Peter Campbell,Patti Waldmeir in Detroit
Ford is open to working with other carmakers to expand self-driving services internationally, the head of the carmaker’s autonomous vehicles business said, adding weight to speculation it may partner with Volkswagen on driverless cars.The US carmaker and its German peer are in “broad” talks over collaboration in a number of areas, both companies have said.
Sherif Marakby, CEO of Ford Autonomous Vehicles, said collaborating in other regions “totally makes a lot of sense”.
“Joint investment with people who can complement each other makes perfect sense,” he told the Financial Times in an interview.
He said: “The autonomous vehicle development and business costs billions and billions of dollars in one region, so when trying to deploy this across multiple regions it totally makes sense to be joining in on the risk and the reward.”
The “opportunity to co-invest not just in the technology but the business and go-to-market and share the reward of that, it does make sense,” he added.
Mr Marakby declined to comment on the Volkswagen talks specifically.
Ford’s chief financial officer Bob Shanks told investors last month that the pair were having “a very broad set of discussions about how we can help each other around the world”.
Earlier this week, Herbert Diess, Volkswagen chief executive, said talks could lead to VW sharing its electric car platform with Ford, and the pair collaborating over US manufacturing.
Carmakers and technology groups are developing self-driving systems to reduce road accidents as well as to open up new business models, and many are collaborating to reduce the vast investment costs needed.
BMW and Fiat are working alongside Intel, while Honda and SoftBank have both invested in Cruise, the General Motors self-driving car unit.
Ford, which is also in talks with possible external investors for its own self-driving unit, is focusing on building the services it will roll out from 2021, so that it can deploy “at scale”, Mr Marakby said.
It is testing potential services in Miami and Washington DC, with partnerships with Domino’s and Postmates, and has plans to announce a third US city next year.
In time the company will deploy “tens of thousands” of vehicles into its services, said Mr Marakby, who joined Ford from Uber last year to lead its self-driving efforts.
As well as developing the self-driving technology used to operate the vehicles, testing the services has allowed the company to tweak the exact business models it will roll out in just over two years’ time.
The group is considering a hub-and-spoke system for deliveries, allowing its vehicles to deliver mail and packages to mini-depots, with human operators delivering to specific addresses that a road vehicle cannot reach, such as apartments.
It is also investigating using drones to take packages to their final destination.
Mr Marakby said: “The interesting thing is you can solve some of these problems with people, meaning if the autonomous vehicle delivers stuff to a central area in a subdivision you can have people actually — not a person per vehicle — who can do multiple deliveries, in addition to drones and other things”.
Ford will develop its own purpose-built vehicle for the services that can carry both people and goods, in order to maximise the use of the vehicles outside of rush hour.
Volkswagen has also shown off several autonomous concept cars, including a large walk-in bus called Sedric. The group is working with Aurora, a self-driving development company founded by Waymo founder Chris Urmson, for its technology.
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