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Ford to sell fully autonomous vehicles by 2021

August 21st, 2016  |  Auto

Ford Motor Company made waves last week when it announced that it will have fully autonomous cars on the streets in just 5 years.

While advanced driver systems like those of the Tesla Autopilot system are becoming more and more commonplace in modern vehicles, recent incidents have highlighted just how far there is left to go before cars are capable of fully unassisted driving. This is why pretty much every automaker and some tech companies are racing to try and be the first to get a viable product approved and on the market.

Self-driving cars present complications for individual use thanks to insurance regulations and bylaws that just don’t take into consideration the possibility of a self-driving vehicle. Because of this, Ford is going to focus on fleet sales to ride-sharing companies first. These cars won’t belong to anyone other than the company and won’t even feature backup drivers as they won’t have steering wheels or pedals.

This is a big step beyond what other companies have been doing. Where most of their competition has been taking their time to make incremental steps toward full autonomy, Ford wants to go right to that final step.

Nissan has previously promised full urban autonomy in 2020 with its ProPILOT technology, however there’s no word on if or when that tech would make it stateside. Tesla continues to incrementally improve its Autopilot program. Google, seems confident enough in its software, but has yet to partner with any automaker to implement its program in a consumer vehicle.