Ford in No ‘Race to Make Announcements’ on Self-Driving Cars, Says CEO

Ford is “working very hard” on autonomous vehicles, CEO Mark Fields said in Q&A on a Thursday earnings call when asked if he thinks self-driving cars are being “overhyped” in the media and by automotive competitors. Whenever “something new and shiny and sexy” emerges like autonomous vehicles, “I think sometimes the media does tend to write about things maybe in flourishing ways,” Fields said. “I mean we're just going to stay very focused on our plan.” Fields agrees “there's a lot of announcements going on right now by a lot of competitors” on autonomous vehicles, “and I just want to be really clear,” he said. “We are not in a race to make announcements. We are in a race to do what's right and best for our customers and best for our business, period.” Following the General Motors $581 million acquisition of Cruise Automation and its $500 million investment in Lyft to test self-driving cars, GM CEO Mary Barra said on GM’s earnings call that commercializing autonomous vehicles is “something I focus on every day” (see 1607220003). Earlier, BMW, Intel and Mobileye announced plans to bring autonomous vehicles to streets by 2021 (see 1607010052).