Ford Motor Co. (F Quick QuoteF - Free Report) announced plans to launch a fully autonomous Society of Automotive Engineers-rated (SAE) level 4-capable vehicle by 2021. The vehicle will be produced in high volume and will be aimed at ride-hailing and ride-sharing services. It will not have a steering wheel or gas and brake pedals.

To achieve this target, Ford is investing in or collaborating with four startups, namely Velodyne, SAIPS, Nirenberg Neuroscience LLC and Civil Maps. The automaker has invested in Silicon Valley-based Velodyne to accelerate large-scale production of affordable automotive light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors. It also acquired Israel-based SAIPS, a computer vision and machine learning company. SAIPS’ algorithmic solutions in image and video processing, deep learning, signal processing and classification should help vehicles learn and adapt to their surroundings.

Ford also invested in Berkeley, CA-based Civil Maps to enhance its high-resolution 3D mapping capabilities. Further, the automaker signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Nirenberg Neuroscience that offers a powerful machine vision platform for performing navigation, object recognition, facial recognition and other functions.

Apart from these, Ford will add two new buildings and 150,000 square feet of work and lab space to its Palo Alto campus by mid-2017, and double the size of the Palo Alto team by the end of 2017.

Further, Ford will triple its fleet of fully autonomous Ford Fusion Hybrid test vehicles to 30 by the end of the year. This will make it the largest such fleet in the industry. The fleet will be tripled again in 2017. Ford’s fleet of autonomous vehicles is being tested on the roads in California, Arizona and Michigan.

FORD MOTOR CO Price

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Zacks Rank

Ford currently carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell). Some better-ranked automobile stocks include The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (GT Quick QuoteGT - Free Report) , Fox Factory Holding Corp (FOXF Quick QuoteFOXF - Free Report) and Gentex Corp. (GNTX Quick QuoteGNTX - Free Report) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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