Ford Motor Company: Argo AI, an autonomous car firm, is closing down, and its primary investors, Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen Group will receive a portion of its assets.
The inability of Argo to find new investors and Ford’s “strategic choice” to divert funds away from robotaxi technology and toward cutting-edge driver support systems appear to be the driving forces for the move. The manufacturer claims that in the third quarter, Argo AI resulted in a net loss of $827 million(opens in a new window).
According to a statement from the business, “The decision has been reached that Argo will not continue on its goal as a corporation in conjunction with our stockholders.” While many of the professionals will have the chance to continue working on automated driving technologies with either Ford or Volkswagen, tragically, employment for others will end.
According to TechCrunch (Opens in a new window), employees have been informed that they would get a severance package that includes insurance as well as two different bonuses—an annual reward and a transaction incentive following the completion of the Ford/VW agreement. If neither company decides to keep you, you’ll receive further termination and severance money, which includes health insurance.
Ford anticipated introducing high-driving automation (Level 4) vehicles by 2021, which is one step below completely driverless, when it invested in Argo five years ago. Yet as 2022 draws to a close, there are still no Ford vehicles without steering wheels on the road.
In a third-quarter earnings report, Ford President and CEO Jim Farley stated that it was “mission-critical for Ford to build exceptional and distinctive L2+ and L3 [partial and conditional driving automation] applications that at the same time make transportation even safer.” Although lucrative, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are still a ways off, “we’re enthusiastic about a future for L4 ADAS, but we won’t necessarily have to produce that technology ourselves.”
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