... [+]After pulling the plug on its investment in automated driving developer Argo AI in October 2022, Ford today announced the establishment of a new company that will employ many of the engineers that formerly worked on robotaxi efforts. Latitude AI is a wholly owned subsidiary that will be headquartered in Pittsburgh, which was also home to Argo AI.
At the time the Argo shutdown was announced, Ford CEO Jim Farley explained that the automaker had decided to refocus its efforts away from fully automated robotaxi and delivery vehicles to partially and conditionally automated systems. These are commonly referred to level 2 and level 3 based on the Society of Automotive Engineers definitions. These L2/L3 systems can be sold to customers today and in the coming years and generate revenue and profits right away.
The highly automated technology, referred to as level 4 that Argo was developing is designed to operate without any human interaction or supervision. Argo’s technology was well regarded and by mid-2022, it had begun fully driverless testing in Miami and Austin as well as ride-hailing pilots with safety drivers.
When the Argo shutdown was announced, Ford said it planned to hire many of the engineers there to support its internal efforts and 550 or about one-quarter of the Argo team joined the mothership. Those employees now form the core of Latitude including experts in machine learning, robotics, cloud platforms, mapping, sensing and compute, testing and safety engineering.... [+]