Ford Teams With Domino's And Postmates On Self-Driving Car Project

Ford (NYSE:F) announced on Tuesday morning a new self-driving vehicle project that will see the company partner with Domino's Pizza (NYSE:DPZ) and delivery service Postmates in Miami.

The automotive giant expanded its partnership with Argo AI in order to start mapping roads throughout Miami-Dade County using a fleet of Fusion Hybrids. Ford pointed to the area’s heavy traffic congestion and noted that racking up these mapping trips could prove vital in the eventual roll-out of self-driving cars.

In a post written by Ford Vice President of Autonomous Vehicles and Electrification, Sherif Marakby, the company detailed its current driverless car testing plan in southern Florida.

Thanks @MiamiDadeCounty for the warm welcome! Learn how we’re testing our self-driving vehicles to help advance the future of transportation. #CityOfTomorrow. https://t.co/9X7zIpFzTG

— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) February 27, 2018

Last week, Ford began using Domino's to help test how customers might respond to driverless vehicle tech. The company’s Postmates partnership is set to begin in March. Ford hopes to answer three basic questions during this test phase.

First, the company wants to understand how employees will stock the cars and send them off. Second, Ford wants to see how customers actually interact with the driverless delivery cars when they are picking up their food, and how far they will be willing to walk to pick it up. Lastly, the car company wants to gauge what benefits people should get from a self-driving experience.

Humans will drive all of the Ford delivery vehicles during this stage of testing. The car will be fitted with blacked-out windows, and the drivers simply won’t interact with customers in order to mimic the intended experience. Drivers will be instructed not to double park, which means customers might have to walk a longer distance in order to pick up their food.

“The last fifty feet of delivering goods is a real challenge,” EVP of global markets for Ford, Jim Farley, told CNBC. “This will help us better understand how customers interact with vehicles when there is a delivery by an autonomous-drive vehicle.”

Ford’s goal is to use what it learns from this series of testing and apply it to its expected launch of a

“purpose-built self-driving vehicle” in 2021. “The development of self-driving vehicles hints at a whole new way of moving people and goods,” Marakby wrote.

Ford’s latest self-driving endeavor is part of its “City of Tomorrow” plan. Movement on this plan comes not too long after the National Safety Council estimated that there were 40,100 motor vehicle deaths in 2017. One of the possible long-term benefits of autonomous vehicles is a reduction in car accidents and traffic-related deaths.

A variety of other firms, from Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) to Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) , are also testing self-driving cars. General Motors (NYSE:GM) will start testing autonomous vehicles in New York City soon, while Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) recently announced partnerships with Volkswagen (OTC:VLKAY) , Uber, and China's Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) that will see the chipmaker bring its “DRIVE” AI platform to these firms’ respective autonomous vehicle projects.

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