General Motors has made the Chevrolet Bolt EV the flagship of its future autonomous fleet. Uber has a high-profile partnership revolving around Volvo?s XC90 SUVs for its self-driving future. Waymo has made itself synonymous with Chrysler minivans. Ford, on the other hand, hasn?t revealed much to date about the vehicle it intends to use to usher in its self-driving business.
That started changing this week, when Ford?s executive vice president of global products offered at least a peek at Ford?s approach to building an entirely new vehicle tailor-made for the autonomous age. In a blog post published on Medium, Jim Farley wrote that the company has been developing a hybrid vehicle that will be suited for commercial deployment in both ride-hailing and delivery fleets.
These fully driverless vehicles will be manufactured at Ford?s Flat Rock Assembly Plant in southeastern Michigan. Multiple pilot projects involving both the technology and business models that underpin their use cases will begin sometime in 2018 in the as yet unspecified city where Ford intends to launch its commercial service. That large-scale launch, as previously announced, remains on track for 2021.
?
?Next year will be an important time for us, as we begin

to test both our self-driving technology and business model

in a variety of pilot programs.?
? Jim Farley, Ford
?

?We?re spending an extensive amount of time conducting research into how people are using new services such as ride hailing today, and w...