Ford Motors plans to spend 4 billion million until 2023 in its subsidiary "Ford Autonomous Vehicles", newly created and dedicated to the production of autonomous vehicles.
The car manufacturer announced on Tuesday that it has just created Ford Autonomous vehicles LLC, its new independent vehicle division, which will include the integration of automatic driving systems, vehicle research And the development of state-of-the-art technologies.
The second U.S. car manufacturer said the new unit will be headed by Vice President Sherif Marakby, and will be primarily based on the new Ford Corktown campus in Detroit. This immense structure will transform the former "Michigan Central Station" into the centrepiece of a new centre dedicated to "Transport of the Future". It will be supported by Argo AI, a company based on artificial intelligence in which Ford invested 1 billion million. This amount is included in the expenditure plan of 4 billion.
The amount of the investment, and Ford's decision to create a new organization dedicated to all autonomous vehicles, provides clues to the high ambitions of the car manufacturer. Ford's work on autonomous vehicles was carried out in all the company's subsidiaries, from the product development and research departments to the marketing organizations.
"This is a good time to organize our autonomous driving platform around a single division and a single team in order to best position the company in the face of future opportunities," said Jim Hackett, CEO of Ford.
Over the next four years, Ford will grant more than ten thousand square metres of space to its new division within its Corktown centre and should accommodate more than 2 500 employees, most of them from other divisions of the firm. The remaining area will serve as a living space where employees find shops and even housing.