Argo AI collapse may be a major turning point in the entire field of autonomous driving.
According to foreign media reports, Argo AI, an autonomous driving startup jointly invested by Ford and Volkswagen, will close operations, and some employees will enter Ford and Volkswagen to work, but the specific proportion has not been announced yet.
Ford said in a statement that the company needs to invest in driving assistance technologies that are easier to achieve in the short term, rather than Argo's fully autonomous driving goal.
and Ford's decision also led to Volkswagen's withdrawal. In the future, Ford and Volkswagen will continue to cooperate in the fields of electric car and commercial vehicles in the United States and Europe.
Ford Automobile CEO Jim Farley (Jim Farley) said in a statement on October 26: "There is still a long way to go to achieve large-scale, profitable fully autonomous vehicles, and we don't have to develop this technology ourselves."
Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said that the company believes that its investment in fully autonomous driving will take at least more than five years to see returns, which also means billions of dollars in investment will be needed.
Doug Field, senior product development and technical director of Ford, said bluntly that building an autonomous taxi that can drive freely in dense urban environments is "more difficult than sending people to the moon."
Volkswagen intends to focus its autonomous driving efforts on existing collaborations with Bosch and Horizon.
Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume said in a statement, "Especially in the development of future technologies, focus and speed are crucial. Our goal is to provide customers with the most powerful functions in the shortest possible time and make our development as cost-effective as possible."
In fact, due to security, laws and regulations, technology and other issues, complete L4 autonomous driving cannot be achieved for the time being, but L4 algorithms can be the first to generate the value of commercial applications. That is, technology "dimension reduction", or technology "sinking".
Since this year, L4 autonomous driving companies represented by Wenyuanzhixing , Xiao Ma Zhixing, Yuanrong Qixing, Qingzhou Zhihang, etc. have chosen to realize the commercialization of more scenarios, to achieve the commercialization of more scenarios, they have chosen to realize the L2-L3 advanced intelligent driving capabilities in passenger cars through L4-level autonomous driving algorithms and hardware.
SummaryThe reason for the collapse of Argo AI is that the progress of complete autonomous driving is slow and there is no hope in the short term; and the financing amount has been used up. Based on the uncertainty of the prospects, Ford and Volkswagen will no longer invest; in addition, Ford and Volkswagen tighten their L4 autonomous driving, and both must invest the most core resources in the L2+ and L3 systems.
In short, if you don’t have money and you can’t see hope, it’s better to pay attention to the commercialization of reality.
Argo's collapse and the shift in attitudes of corporate executives show how rapidly the fate of the autonomous driving industry has changed, and 18 months ago, Argo was still considering raising funds through an IPO.
In fact, the "cold" in the field of autonomous driving has gradually spread this year. Shares of leading autonomous driving companies such as Aurora Innovation have fallen by about 80%, while the listing valuation of Mobileye, Intel's autonomous driving business, Mobileye, has shrunk significantly, less than half of its $50 billion target.
