Two of the world's largest automakers, Ford and Volkswagen, have decided to end their joint venture to enter the self-driving vehicle market.
Ford said this week that it had ended its large project as it had doubts about the ability to commercialize self-driving cars and said that the technology is further away than it had previously expected.
The company says it is still optimistic about the future of the technology, but as Ford CEO Jim Farley said, "profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off, and we won’t necessarily have to create that technology ourselves.”
VW CEO Oliver Blume said, “Our goal is to offer our customers the most powerful functions at the earliest possible time and to set up our development as cost-effectively as possible.”
Companies are saying that the development of self-driving vehicles is costly.
Ford said on Wednesday that it expects a loss of $2.7 billion on its investment in Argo AI.
