As Ford Authority has reported on multiple occasions as of late, it’s looking increasingly likely that Ford will team up with commercial robotaxi company Waymo in some way, shape, or form, likely using that company’s tech in its own self-driving vehicles. In fact, Ford Pro CFO Navin Kumar spoke at length about Waymo during a recent appearance at the Deutsche Bank Global Auto Industry Conference, noting that the company may lean on it for Level 4 autonomy. That wasn’t the extent of that topic, either.
“We look at that space. We see scaling there and what Waymo is doing,” Kumar said And I think there’s definitely opportunities. I’ll give a really discrete tactical example. As autonomy scales and they start mapping out cities and you want to go in and start mapping those markets, you want to do that in a very asset-light way. And that’s where Pro can become a really valuable partner in terms of our mobile service, our charging solutions. And we’ve actually set up our charging solutions network with our dealers. And that can help autonomy companies enter markets, test, pilot, validate, start mapping in a really quick and lean way.”
These comments come on the heels of additional revelations from Farley just last month, when the CEO stated that he’s open to partnering with another company on Level 4 autonomous driving technology while dismissing the notion of teaming up with Tesla for that endeavor, even though The Blue Oval seemingly abandoned it in favor of achieving Level 3 years ago. Waymo certainly seems like a strong potential partner in that regard, for a couple of reasons.
For starters, Waymo is already partnering with Ford rival Toyota on a deal centered around developing and deploying AV technologies that capitalizes on the strengths of each. The idea is to combine Waymo’s autonomous driving expertise with Toyota’s vast experience building vehicles to create AVs that are safe and effective. Additionally, Waymo currently dominates the robotaxi market as a whole, completing over five million autonomous trips thus far in a market that’s expected to grow from a $123.08 billion business in 2024 to $480.09 billion by 2032.
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