I maintain that the only reason Google even bothered with autonomous cars is to sell their phatty dataset and protocol to existing automakers.
My bad, I didn't read the article closely enough. Even so, I wasn't under the impression that Ford is "In The Lead", so to speak. For instance, article says this: That's not correct. Uber and Volvo have had them running around since last year. Without starting a debate about this, that seems like an omission in the article.And Uber, despite its sky high market valuation, is still a long, long way from ever making any money, much less making its own autonomous cars.
True, and that's why I said "and Volvo". To be fair, Uber is definitely contributing to development with the data collection aspect of it. They've also been converting Fords with the same tech, ironically. In any case, my point (beyond my frazzlebrained first comment, please forgive me for that one) is that Ford certainly isn't the frontrunner with its tech, winner notwithstanding. The article is saying generally that the automakers have won, but I'm not convinced it's that cut and dry. We're seeing a lot of automakers setting up to become losers too.