Let's bring in Keith not Now. He's Auto editor at Large for Bloomberg News, joining us from our Motor City Detroit bureau in Southfield, Michigan. So, Keith, what do you take away from what Mark Fields just told our own Emily Chang? Yeah, I think you know, what Mark is trying to do is sort of carve a distinct path for Ford. It's been a little unclear, you know, Uh, you know what their strategy was, and so they're taking
a little bit of everyone else's strategy. They're they're going to go you know, completely autonomous, no steering wheel, much like the Google has said they will do with their their car. They want to do it though within the confines of ride hailing and ride sharing, which is very similar to what GM is looking at with with Lift, which had invested in UH. And they want to do it by one, which is the same time frame that
BMW has announcer it's driver less car. So they've they've taken a little bit of each and UH come up with their own plan. UM. You know, it's ambitious because they don't have the big partners that GM has or even BMW. They've aligned with Mobile I and Intel, UM and and they ford tried to align with Google and ended up not doing a deal with them, and instead Google is partnering with Chrysler. Hey, Keith, can you tell us about a company called the Velodine ldar and maybe
just give us some details about what is it? A bus or a mini bus that I believe was showcased in India recently using Velodine ldar technology and it's completely autonomous, right. You know? The UM the thing that that Valodine does for just about everybody UM is is the light our radar, which you know. The way that that works is that
it kind of bounces light off objects lidar. I'm just gonna give you the that's the acronym l I D a R light detection and ranging sensors exactly, and so UM it gives the vehicle the ability to sense its environment in a three sixty degree way UM in conjunction with cameras and traditional radar, so it creates a vision for the car UM and and then it can drive itself.
It's a very expensive component. They're trying to bring the cost of it down by getting more and more customers because Veladine won't just supply forward even though they have struck this deal or by do they're going to continue to supply all the world's automakers, um because they do sort of have the state of the art light ar at the moment. So you know, um Keith, even though Mark Fields kind of seem to want to push back, like you know, the technology companies they're not just going
to rush in. Are sure they're rushing in, but the car companies forward is here the fact that they're doubling their workforce in Palo Alto with the research center. You know, they're increasing the size this facility hugely sixfold actually according
to your story, to over three buildings. It does seem to indicate that Mark Fields realizes that having a presence in you know, in the in the heart that the biggest technology center in the country, if not the world, is important Afard Now, Yeah, and you know, as I was working on this story today, I got a call from General Motors to remind me that they have a Silicon Valley lab to so you know, all that detroyed automakers actoually just say all the automakers in general want
to have a presence in Silicon Valley, which I think demonstrates the importance of that hotbed of innovation. They're trying
to become a part of it. Um, they are still a small part of it when you look at you know, what Google and Apple are doing in in that space, and and from Wall Streets perspective, you know, whatever Ford is doing or GM is doing isn't enough because their stock is down despite record profits, and a lot of that is anxiety over whether or not the traditional automakers, the legacy automakers, can embrace this this changing reality of
more ability. Keith, before we all jump on the autonomous car bandwagon, wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about David Hall. He's the head of Velodne Lidar, He's the founder, and also maybe just give us a little idea of how this technology, like automated technology can be used not just in the automobile industry, but in
factory automation as well. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a really fascinating technology that is you know, very advanced, very expensive, and it does give you this this um, you know, vision of all elements of things that are around you, behind you, um. And then it enables robots to move about in a way that they don't. They
don't bump into things. They can avoid things. In the case of an autonomous car, it's avoiding people and vehicles and buildings and uh and it's it's really um it's like the central nervous system of an autonomous car and uh. And you know it is essential to developing these things with with the appropriate safety. How big of an issue
has it been? Was it when we learned after the fact that there had been a crash involving a Tesla right where the car couldn't read the fact that there was a large truck on the road ahead of it because the way the light was bouncing back. It made some news. It seems like it's died down. Was that a setback? It is just like, oh, well, we're going to have a few of those on the path to
a fully autonomous vehicle, right. I spoke to John Kraftschick, Google's CEO of its self driving car program, about this recently, and the thing he tries to make very clear is that, you know, the autopilot on Tesla is not a fully autonomous system. It doesn't have the light hour that we were just describing. It has cameras, and those cameras UM, which were made by Mobile I did not have the
ability to see cross traffic. That that's something that's not going to arrive in their capabilities for another two years. So the system was really being pushed beyond its limits UM either by the driver, by the company that's in dispute, but UM. But that was taking a driver assist technology and trying to use it as if it were a
fully autonomous technology and the results were tragic. And Keith, just to give you a couple of seconds here, this technology can also be used with unmanned aerial vehicles, right like drones. Sure, I mean that's that's the ability of this three D surround vision that you can get when
you deploy these these three technologies. But you know what they what they require also is you know, some high speed processors, which is why I see Intel involved in this UM to really crunch all the data that comes in through these sensors and tell drones or vehicles where to go. Thank you very much for spending time with
us and in lightening us. Keith Norton is Auto editor at Large for Bloomberg News, telling us about autonomous driving as well as new technology to give that three D and sixty degree View shares a FOURD down six tenths of a percent of twelve dollars thirty five cents. We take you through to the close. Next, this is Bloomberg.