[RahulNagaraj]

According to a media report, Ford is moving away from testing fully-autonomous tech. The American car giant no longer wants to be exempted from safety standards that allow it to test self-driving vehicles on US roads. The exemption given by NHTSA would have allowed the carmaker to test up to 25,000 autonomous vehicles annually.

Reports state that Ford's change in strategy will see it emphasise less on developing Level 4 automation for its commercial fleet and concentrate more on Level 3 driver assistance systems for private vehicles.



Ford even pulled the plug on the Argo AI team last year, which is also backed by VW. Reports state that Ford felt that driverless technology on commercial vehicles is still years off. Hence it would focus on its BlueCruise driver assistance program.

While Level 3 autonomous vehicles do require a person to be present, a Level 4 system doesn't require any human interaction. The Level 4 autonomous tech is being proposed for rideshare and Robotaxi applications. If approved, these vehicles will be deployed without a steering wheel, pedals, manual turn signals or even mirrors.

Apart from Ford, companies like Tesla and Mercedes-Benz are working on developing Level 4 autonomous technology.

Source: CarScoops

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