It has been announced that Ford CEO Mark Fields has a grand target for his company, which is to release a truly legitimate self-driving model that doesn't require any human intervention in a span of five years' time.
Ford's first autonomous car
Fields said that the Ford self-driving car, as envisioned by the automaker, would not be featuring a gas pedal nor a steering wheel and that the passengers wouldn't have to control the car in a specific area.
Making these comments during his interview with CNBC at the recently-concluded Detroit's North American International Auto Show, Fields has also questioned the automotive industry's use of the term "autonomous" in describing vehicles with any level of self-driving capabilities.
Fields take on the term "autonomous"
Fields strongly claim that the automotive industry uses the word autonomous very, very liberally. He strongly believes that there are different levels of autonomy. According to CNBC, engineering professional association SAE International has developed a six-level scale for automated driving, with the level zero being no automation at all and level five being the full automation.
Ford's level of autonomy
Fields have also added that when a company claims that they are going to develop an autonomous vehicle, the question that it should be asked would be "at what level?" In Ford's case, as what Fields boldly said in his interview with CNBC, it is going to be a level four vehicle in 2021, or "high automation" as defined by SAE's six-tier scale.
This entails that the automated system can perform every aspect of the driving task when it is set in specific driving modes, even if a driver does not appropriately respond to a request to take over. With this being said, this would arguably be the first actual self-driving car that the world would witness once it pulls through in 2021.
It will only be a matter of time now from us witnessing the first ever autonomous car.
