DEARBORN,- In Elon Musk-like fashion, Ford CEO Jim Farley made bullish claims about self-driving tech and said the automaker’s next electric pickup will drive itself.
In a new interview with Bloomberg published Friday, Farley upped his company’s pressure on Tesla, saying the company’s next electric truck set to debut in 2025 is a “breakthrough product.”
“On the highway on a sunny day, you should be able to go to sleep in your truck or make a call or do whatever you want to do in your truck while it drives for you,” Farley told Bloomberg.
The type of system Farley described would be a huge step forward from Ford’s existing driver-assistance feature, BlueCruise. BlueCruise invites drivers to take their hands off the wheel while it steers, brakes, and accelerates on certain highways, but drivers need to keep their eyes on the road and be ready to take control at any moment.
Right now, you can’t buy a car that drives itself.
For years, Musk has claimed that self-driving Teslas are coming, but the tech isn’t ready yet. The firm has rolled out a prototype version of its Full Self-Driving feature that attempts to navigate any and all driving environments, but it requires supervision and users have reported that it sometimes behaves erratically.
Ford targets Tesla in the EV wars
Ford has been coming after Tesla since it began focusing on electric vehicles like its F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E, and experts have said Ford could surpass the EV-market leader’s sales by 2025. Ford was the number two seller of EVs in the US in 2022.
“We plan to challenge Tesla and all comers to become the top EV maker in the world,” Farley said last April. As ambitious as Farley has been about the automaker’s electrification plans, Ford is on track to burn $3 billion on its EV business, known as Model e, this year.
The declaration about self-driving tech comes mere months after Ford shut down Argo AI, its autonomous-driving unit that was working on self-driving taxis.
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