Self-Driving Cars Are Overestimated, Says Ford

Amid the rapid growth of self-driving cars with major players like Tesla racing to refine and perfect their products, Ford CEO says that everyone should settle down. And what are his reasons for this statement?

Don't Expect Too Much

Do you remember that just a couple of years ago many automakers said they would have their own self-driving car in traffic soon? Uber promised to give us self-driving Uber taxis in 2016, but then they stopped that project because of that fatal crash in Arizona. Now even Google and Tesla say that they can't tell for sure a release date and where the cars could self-drive. Now Ford is telling us to calm down our expectation too.

At an event of the company this Tuesday, Jim Hackett, the CEO of Ford, said that the appearance of self-driving vehicles has been overestimated. However, the plan of Ford for its “first self-driving car” is still going on for 2021, but with there won't be many applications.

Jim Hackett stated that:

The CEO has been working hard to clean up the mess of Ford low-profit margin of last year. However, he still pretty confident that this year his company will turn it around.

Geo-fencing is not a new idea. The spokesperson of Ford autonomous vehicles department said in an email that the plan of Ford is to operate their self-driving card in  “within a specific area” like delivering pizzas in Miami only.

However, according to them, a human driver could still use “autonomous mode” “as long as they were operating within an approved domain where the technology works.” Yet we have to take into account that:

So it is already 2019 now and we are not at all close to get a safe and fully autonomous car on our roads. Car production is hard, surely they will need a lot of baby steps to make it right.

Tit-for-tat tariffs

According to the New York Times, both the EU and the US are imposing a lot of tariffs on each other's products. This spat includes the tariffs for solar panel, washing machine, aluminum, and even steel. All of these tariffs are the result of a long time spat over the Airbus of EU and Boeing of US.

Just yesterday morning, we received a tweet from Donal Trump saying that:

All of that was begin with the core of the conflict lies with Airbus and Boeing. The recent crisis of 737 Max is not of much help either.

So to summarize the Time has broken down everything. First, due to the support in the type of "launch aid" that the EU was giving to Airbus faced protest from the US. According to the US, this is an unfair market practice because this strategy of the EU will give Airbus many advantages in the competition with Boeing in Australia, Europe, South Korea, China, and other locations.

Meanwhile, the EU said that U.S aviation also gets a lot of tax incentives, federal and state fund to compete with Airbus.

So either way, consumers are the last to suffer as the price will rise.

Second Appeal

Just two days ago, the former chairman of Nissan Auto - Carlos Ghosn has announced a statement via video. In that video, he talked about all of those “backstabbing” and “conspiracy” in the industry.

Just two days ago, the former chairman of Nissan Auto - Carlos Ghosn has announced a statement via video

His legal team is actually filling another appeal for him because they arrested him again last Thursday. This time he was arrested for new allegations of putting $5 million of the company in his own pocket.

They Are Kinda Late But Still It Is Okay

So we have Cadillac in the conversation already and now we gonna do the same for Infiniti. The first electric car of Infiniti will come out in China and they expected to launch it in three years. Not really soon right?

From the report of Reuters, we know that the concept car will be based on the foundation technology called - Qs Inspiration electric sedan. They will show the concept model of this car this month at the Shanghai Auto Show. Christian Meunier - Infiniti Chairman said to the press that:

The Qs Inspiration electric sedan.

Recently to reduce the smog and pollution, the Chinese government has enforced new official quotas. Because of that many car manufacturers in China have to produce and sell more of the so-called new-energy vehicles. These new-energy vehicles could either be plug-in electric hybrids or battery electric cars.

We don't know yet if they will bring Infiniti EV outside of China. But at the very least Infiniti has a design and a name for its vehicle which is better than Cadillac. However, 3 years is just too long. At the moment, Tesla is in full-swing mode, Porsche Taycan is coming and Audi is preparing for the E-Tron.

In case Infiniti pulls that off, it will be impressive.

Lotus is doing good

Geely is trying to buy off Lotus - a struggling automaker company, Geely has deep pockets by the way. So with this new overlord and all of what resources they have started to work on making new assembly plant to build their cars.

The company has already begun the construction work on an assembly plant of $1.3-billion in Wuhan, we got this news from Automotive News Europe.

In fact, Lotus is a company based in Norfolk, UK. This new Wuhan assembly plant will be their first production line out of the UK. They expect to put the plant in Wuhan to start production in 2 years.