Ford Motor Co. has withdrawn a petition to deploy a vehicle equipped with advanced driverless features, after concluding that the automobile industry is not close to profitable mass production of fully autonomous vehicles.
The decision, detailed in an unpublished notice by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, follows the shuttering of the autonomous-vehicle startup Argo AI, which was backed by Ford F, +2.52% and Volkswagen AG VOW, -0.16% VWAGY, -0.52%.
“Accordingly, NHTSA will take no further action on Ford’s petition,” that notice said. The full document was set to be published on Friday.
“As evidenced by the planned shutdown of our ADS partner Argo AI, we believe the road to fully autonomous vehicles, at scale, with a profitable business model, will be a long one,” Ford said in a letter to the NHTSA, dated Feb. 13, which was posted on Twitter by a reporter with Reuters.
The company, in that letter, added that it believed that it was “more prudent” to focus on developing less advanced autonomous-vehicle technology, under which an automobile’s driver still retains control over the vehicle.
Shares of Ford were unchanged after hours, after closing up around 2% during regular trading.
The NHTSA received the petition from Ford in July 2021. Ford at that time was requesting a temporary exemption from several federal vehicle-safety standards for vehicles that would be outfitted with systems for automated driving.
The agency put out a notice seeking public comment on the matter roughly a year later, but as Ford grew more skeptical about the near-term prospects for self-driving vehicles, it detailed the plans to withdraw the petition in February.
Ford, in the February letter, said it had been seeking a two-year exemption “to further develop, evaluate, and deploy its Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Level 4 Automated Driving System (ADS) feature equipped vehicle.”
The Society of Automotive Engineers, an engineering trade group, broadly defines “Level 4” automation technology as technology that does not require the person in the driver’s seat to drive the vehicle or take it over when activated.
Ford, in the letter, said that it made more sense to focus on so-called Level 2 and Level 3 technologies that didn’t require an exemption. “Level 2” features still require a vehicle’s operator to drive the vehicle but offer help like lane-centering and brake and acceleration support, according to the SAE. “Level 3” technology offers more driverless technology.
“In late 2022, Ford announced its strategic decision to focus on SAE Level 2 and Level 3 features for personally owned vehicles, shifting away from developing Level 4 autonomous vehicles for commercial fleets,” a Ford representative said over email. “As a result of this decision, we no longer need NHTSA to approve the Exemption Petition to support Level 4 related testing for Ford at this time.”
In October, Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley told analysts during an earnings call that the industry had yet to get the financials and the technology to work for vehicles equipped with Level 4 autonomy.
“We still believe in Level 4 autonomy, that it will have a big impact on our business of moving people,” he said. “We’ve learned, though, in our partnership with Argo, and after our own internal investments, that we will have a very long road.”
“It’s estimated that more than $100 billion has been invested in the promise of Level 4 autonomy,” he continued. “And yet no one has defined a profitable business model at scale.”
