"It’s taking that investment and putting it towards a business where we think we will have a sizable return in the near term relative to one that’s going to have a long arc," he added. The company didn't elaborate on a specific timeframe for when it would potentially be ready, thought Farley did stress that developing the foundational technologies needed for Level 4 will not be won quickly."We don’t expect a single ‘Aha!’ moment like we used to,” he said.
Farley anticipates updated L2+ and L3 systems to arrive in the coming years alongside the company's second cycle of EVs in 2023 - 2025."Ford is completely refreshing it's EV lineup globally, introducing fully updatable electrical architectures and in-house software development for controlling the vehicle," Farley noted.
Fields stressed the importance of keeping much of the back end functions of these evolving ADAS technologies in-house."We will have a core team that can integrate a system, understand its performance at the system level," he said."And we will own the software. It is really important that we also own the connection to these vehicles. L3 is a connected technology, so the ability to have a pipeline that collects data and makes the system better and better — we must own that.
"That's a problem that actually doesn't exist in L4 and is a huge opportunity for us to create a Ford experience that's really unique." Fields said. All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at the time of publishing.
translation 'wow, this is much harder than we thought'