Ford Forms Alliances With Uber, Lyft, Volvo And Google For Autonomous Cars

The tech and autonomous giants unite for a common agenda to promote autonomous cars.

Ford Motor Company has joined forces with Volvo, Lyft, Uber and Google so that they can come up with a coalition for the advocacy of self-driven cars. The group is adamant to get the autonomous cars in the industry at the earliest. These companies are demanding the help of federal action to make this dream a reality. As per a report by Reuters, the group desires to work with the regulatory bodies and lawmakers so that they can acknowledge the masses and generate awareness regarding the safety prospects and benefits of such vehicles.

Lyft and Volvo cars are also part and parcel of the “Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets”. The spokesperson and counsel for this project is Mr. David Strickland who has served at the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Mr. Strickland published a statement that laid emphasis on the need for distinct, clear and unified federal standards.

The NHTSA is providing information on various self-driven cars. Thus, they are likely to have a majority stake in the way these cars surface in the future. Autonomous cars are a big area of concern for both, the renowned automotive giants and tech companies since they are not only collaborating but also competing with one another to come up with self-driven cars. 

The NHTSA has plans to go to the Stanford University and conduct a public forum. This will help them in drawing comments for automotive and tech firms so that the guidelines can be chalked out for self-driven cars.

In a recent statement by Fords Motors, it has been confirmed that the coalition will ensure that a complete autonomous car surfaces at the earliest. According to a statement by Uber, the traffic accidents contribute to around 1.3 million deaths per annum. It is also believed that the self-driven cars can minimize the congestion and save innocent lives.

It is interesting to note that a great chunk of the statements are directly associated to the death caused by human errors. However, the failed to raise awareness on the issues that are aroused because of self-driven cars, this includes the mass cut off in jobs when such cars surface. For Uber, this will be a major change since it will not need human’s drivers to function but it can simply replace them with autonomous cars. to make this a reality, the company will have to make various hefty investments but they will then be able to overcome the controversies associated with human drivers.

Thus it is quite easy to gauge how the roll out of self-driven cars will benefit these companies. NHTSA has plans to surface the guidelines in July which will help set standard for policymakers, states and companies when it comes to autonomous cars. The NHTSA has highlighted that the artificial intelligence based system in the car can be coined as the driver.