Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.  I’m Fred Fishkin.  Ford’s investment in Argo AI will make them one of only perhaps two survivors in the self driving vehicle platform race.  So says Ford Director of Autonomous Vehicle and Technology Development John Rich.  The next generation test vehicle, which Rich calls a final step prototype, was unveiled last week…

“What we have today is a vehicle capable of supporting the true removal of the driver.  There’s a lot of moving parts here.  We think about sensors, we think about compute.  It’s a tremendously sophisticated piece of equipment.”

It is built on a Ford Escape Hybrid platform…and will be tested in half a dozen cities.  The goal is to create an autonomous vehicle service.  Rich was speaking on the Smart Driving Cars podcast, which I co host at www.smartdrivingcar.com.

You can find us at Techstination.com.  I’m Fred Fishkin.