Ford is revving up its self-driving ambitions and making key tech in-house
Darron Cummings/AP
- Ford announced plans to deploy eyes-off driving software on public roads by 2028.
- The company said building the tech in-house is 30% cheaper than seeking outside suppliers.
- Leading EV companies in the US have taken a similar in-house approach to developing self-driving tech.
Ford said it's developing autonomous capabilities, such as eyes-off driving, that will be ready for public roads by 2028.
The legacy automaker said in an announcement on Wednesday that it will be cheaper to develop self-driving technology in-house than to seek an outside supplier.
"Because we own the technology behind our driver assistance systems, we can deliver significantly more capability at a 30% lower cost than if we bought it from outside suppliers, which makes advanced driver assistance scalable," Ford announced during CES in Las Vegas.
Chris Morse, a spokesperson for Ford, told Business Insider that the cost is compared to "the supplier system that we have on-road today." A specific supplier was not named.
Key team members behind Ford's ADAS ambitions gave Business Insider a broad overview of some of the advantages of an in-house approach.
Sammy Omari, head of ADAS and infotainment at Ford Motor Company, said the company can have greater oversight over how the sensors are utilized and integrated into the vehicles.
"How can we now combine the information from all these sensors in the most cost-effective way to get to the highest performance?" he said. "These are some of the key reasons why we can get to that price point."
Paul Costa, a former Apple employee who now leads Ford's electrical engineering team, told Business Insider that the company can reduce the number of separate computer modules inside its vehicles — an ADAS computer, an infotainment system, an audio system, and a networking computer — into one computer without having to compromise performance.
Costa said Ford has "great suppliers," but seeking third parties doesn't allow for integration of modules, and the size of the computers themselves is larger.
"To integrate, I can't do this with all these suppliers," he said. "We need to bring this stuff in-house, and it allows for this ability to do the trifecta at once: smaller, cheaper, and higher performance."
There are several players in the business of licensing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for car makers, including Nvidia, Waymo, and Wayve, among others. Ford previously announced a partnership with Mobileye in 2020 to develop its ADAS software, called BlueCruise.
A spokesperson for Mobileye declined to comment.
Leading EV companies in the US — namely Tesla and Rivian — have taken an in-house approach to developing their own self-driving technology. Rivian announced earlier in December that it designed its own silicon chip to power the autonomous driving computer inside its future vehicles.
Costa told Business Insider that Ford isn't interested in making its own chip and the automaker is happy with its current suppliers.
"We're not interested in a TOPS war," Costa said, referring to a metric chipmakers commonly like to tout.
"Honestly, I don't want custom silicon," he later added. "If I can get other people's volume on silicon that I need, that is good for democratization."