Last year, Austin became the epicenter of Ford's efforts to bring self-driving cars to consumers through an autonomous taxi service.
That was expected to launch in 2021. But, like so many things these days, the launch is being postponed.
The company said that it needs to reevaluate to gauge the impact of COVID-19 on consumer behavior and now plans to launch in 2022 in Austin, Miami and Washington, D.C. The company noted the delay is not due to any technical issues.
"This decision was made given the challenges of the current business environment, as well as the need to evaluate the long-term impact of COVID-19 on customer behaviors," the company said in a statement emailed to Inno. "The world is changing, as you know, and this delay is about Ford focusing on the changing customer behaviors and evaluating our go-to-market strategy based on this."
While self-driving cars have been tested in Austin for years, Ford made several major moves last year to gear up for consumer service here. It announced a new command center near the Austin airport that was slated to open by 2021 and said Austin would be the first of Ford’s three self-driving car markets to have a command center. Its other two markets for the service are Washington, D.C., and Miami.
Ford also announced last year that it had leased a building close to downtown for its self-driving vehicle fleet and members of the Argo AI team, which operates its local test vehicles. It also announced plans to hire technical workers, maintenance staff and other roles.
Those are going forward as planned.
"... in terms of the terminal and command center, everything remains on track as planned," a company representative said via email.
Ford’s vehicles were initially being manually driven through East Austin and downtown to 3D map streets in advance of letting the software take the wheel. The company said at the time that the area provides a lot of testing opportunities since there are a lot of pedestrians, scooters and regular traffic. It planned to expand testing to other parts of the city later on.
