zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Tech
/
Here’s How Much More Advanced Ford’s New Driverless Fusion Is Than The Old One
Here’s How Much More Advanced Ford’s New Driverless Fusion Is Than The Old One-July 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:10:41

Ford announced on Wednesday that it will debut the second generation self-driving Fusion Hybrid at next month’s CES conference, and the vehicle it’s touting comes equipped with a load of new technology to push the company along toward its goal of selling an autonomous vehicle by 2021.

The company also said it was tripling its autonomous fleet, to about 90 cars, in 2017. The updated model takes everything the company learned in the three year since the company first started testing the Fusion Hybrid autonomous vehicle and builds on it, Chris Brewer, chief program engineer of Ford’s Autonomous Vehicle Development, said.

By Chris Brewer, Chief Program Engineer, Ford Autonomous Vehicle Development

Brewer said the new vehicle uses Ford’s current autonomous vehicle platform, but “ups the processing power with new computer hardware.”

“Electrical controls are closer to production-ready, and adjustments to the sensor technology, including placement, allow the car to better see what’s around it,” he said.

The new car will test out two new hockey-puck-sized LiDAR sensors, which generate millions of beams from the car’s front to produce a 360-degree view of the car. The new sensors have a sleeker design, Brewer said, and only require two instead of four, but it still receives as much data.

Three cameras are mounted on two racks located on the roof, which all work to identify objects on the road and read traffic lights, Brewer said. Radar sensors—short- and long-range—provide “another level of vision, helping determine how an object is moving relative to the car,” he said. The new radar sensors are supposedly adept at seeing through rain, fog, and heavy snow—an obvious selling point for rainy, snowy and foggy Metro Detroit.

The car is a firm leap toward the company’s goal of developing a fully-autonomous — defined as an — vehicle, which doesn’t require a driver to take the reins of the car. And Brewer feels the Ford virtual driver system — comprised of 3D maps, algorithms for path planning, and high-tech electronic systems — is designed to achieve that.

Autonomous cars are coming, and while it may sometimes feel like they’re already here, they’re…

“Building a car that will not be controlled by a human driver is completely different from designing a conventional vehicle, and this raises a whole new set of questions for our autonomous vehicle engineering team: How do you replicate everything a human driver does behind the wheel in a vehicle that drives itself?” he wrote.

So when might we see this stuff on cars we can buy? The company will debut the car at next month’s CES conference in Las Vegas, and it’ll be on display the following week at the Detroit auto show. And while Ford’s self-driving goals seem quite ambitious—the company’s 2021 goal involves , and the public could —this seems to be something worth keeping any eye on in 2017.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Tech
Costco Will Sell The Chevy Blazer EV At A Discount To Go With Your Rotisserie Chicken
Costco Will Sell The Chevy Blazer EV At A Discount To Go With Your Rotisserie Chicken
knows that you keep coming back for the and Kirkland brand, but you can now also buy a cheaper at your local warehouse. Chevy notified its dealers that members are eligible for a $1,000 rebate on the through January 2, according to . The discount is part of ,...
Jul 31, 2025
Volkswagen EVs Can Now Power Your House For Two Days (Update)
Volkswagen EVs Can Now Power Your House For Two Days (Update)
Experts have said that one of the ways to speed up EV adoption is for them to support . The ability for owners to power their house off their car or from the grid is vital. Just nine EVs on the market currently support bidirectional charging, but now VW...
Jul 31, 2025
Biden’s First EV Charging Station Goes Online After $7.5 Billion In American EV Investments
Biden’s First EV Charging Station Goes Online After $7.5 Billion In American EV Investments
Despite in investments for the development of in the , not a single charging station had gone live thanks to — until now. The first EV charger paid for by Biden’s Bipartisan deal has come online in Ohio, according to , which marks the operational start of what the...
Jul 31, 2025
Truck Fans Would Rather Wait For A Toyota Tacoma EV Than Buy A F-150 Lightning Or Cybertruck
Truck Fans Would Rather Wait For A Toyota Tacoma EV Than Buy A F-150 Lightning Or Cybertruck
fans are already cooling on despite more options on the market and news of upcoming models from the likes of Chevy and Ram. The and have yet to be released, while the has recently joined the and for sale in the U.S. And, yet, all of these current and...
Jul 31, 2025
Danish Investors Dump Tesla Shares After Elon Musk Calls Strikes In Sweden 'Insane'
Danish Investors Dump Tesla Shares After Elon Musk Calls Strikes In Sweden 'Insane'
Danish pension fund PensionDanmark is dumping all of its stock and putting the U.S. EV maker on its exclusion list of the companies it chooses to invest in – or not. The fund is selling all of its shares due to Elon Musk’s refusal to enter into labor agreements...
Jul 31, 2025
GM Says It's Dropping Apple CarPlay And Android Auto Because They're Unsafe (Update)
GM Says It's Dropping Apple CarPlay And Android Auto Because They're Unsafe (Update)
GM is still dealing with the fallout of its decision to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of developing its own in-house system. In the last eight months, the company has had to deal with while still maintaining its in-house system will be “.” Since neither of...
Jul 31, 2025
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved