Ford CEO Plans To Bring Self-Driving Cars To The Mass Market Within Four Years

How long do you think it will take for self-driving cars to become commercially available? According to Ford CEO, Mark Fields, the automaker expects to make this a reality in the U.S. in the next four years.

Speaking to reporters in San Francisco, Fields said Ford should be able to have fully autonomous vehicles on roads where high-definition maps are available before the end of the decade. He said the key is making sure that complex regulatory and legal issues are resolved in time.

“Technology tends to lead all that,” he said.

Fields’ timeframe is even more ambitious than others in the race to bring autonomous vehicles to our roads. Google has said it hopes self-driving cars will be in the mass market in five years, although the tech giant has yet to reveal a business plan for its own fleet. Many other automakers have offered their own significantly longer timelines for bringing self-driving vehicles to the general public.

“I describe our strategy as having one foot in today and one foot in tomorrow,” Fields said. “We are becoming a mobility company and an auto company.”

He explained part of the company is focused on selling traditional cars, trucks and SUVs, while the other is considering where transportation will be 20 years from now. Fields says he endeavors to bring as much change to the future of transportation as Henry Ford brought 100 years ago.

“What are the decisions that we need to make today to allow us to be successful [in that world]?” Fields said. At the same time, he made sure to remind the gathered reporters that Ford has been the best-selling U.S. carmaker for the past six years.

Ford recently announced that it had started testing its autonomous car project at a 32-acre test facility called Mcity, which provides a full-scale urban environment for trying out its self-driving technology.

Fields explained that data collection and analytics is another area of the company’s focus, with its initial plans being to unify Ford’s existing databases, such as those kept by its sales, credit and customer service arms. Down the road, he said that Ford will need to have the ability to make sense of all that data, provided that customers give their consent for the analysis of their information.

The Ford CEO has emphasized the company’s desire to work with Silicon Valley companies, while not wanting to hand over too much control to Apple and Google. The automaker says it plans to include Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto in some vehicles, but hasn’t yet provided a specific timeframe. “As you can imagine, we are working on it,” said Fields.

When asked about the company’s stock price, Fields explained he learned to stop trying to predict that a long time ago.

“I think we are working on the right things,” he said.