Volkswagen Will Share Electric Car Platform and Autonomous Tech With Ford

Ford and Volkswagen have reached an outline agreement to share electric and autonomous car tech, extending their alliance beyond a cooperation on commercial vehicles. Reuters reports: VW will share its MEB electric vehicle platform [a part bin and toolkit for building electric vehicles] with Ford, the source said. Volkswagen's supervisory board is due to discuss deepening the alliance at a meeting on July 11, 2019, a second source told Reuters. A Ford spokeswoman said, "Our talks with Volkswagen continue. Discussions have been productive across a number of areas. We'll share updates as details become more firm."

Reciprocation

[rmdingler]

Since Ford shared their diesel emissions testing software with VW.

I'd like to teach the World to sing, in perfect harmony...

Re:

[rmdingler]

Volkswagen Will Share Electric Car Platform and Autonomous Tech With Ford

What the fuck does that even mean? They're gonna have dick measuring contests in the cafeteria after hours? Assuming you can read the memu.

Are you suggesting the memu's a fucking card shark, and he's a read akin to Chinese calculus?

Re:

[Freischutz]

Volkswagen Will Share Electric Car Platform and Autonomous Tech With Ford

What the fuck does that even mean? They're gonna have dick measuring contests in the cafeteria after hours? Assuming you can read the memu.

It means they are going to war with Tesla.

Big & Scary = Shack Up

[Tablizer]

The R&D needed for competitive electric and AI is both large and unpredictable. After all, the "real" future may be hydrogen, and AI may prove to lack enough common sense to avoid embarrassing failures*.

The traditional car co's are pooling their resources to spread the cost and risk.

* Embarrassing failures is not the same as more total failures. I suspect bots will prove about equal with humans in terms of reliability, BUT their odd errors will make for more headline clicks. It seems many secretly want

Re:

[Dread Cthulhu]

Agreed - the price of hydrogen alone makes it a hard sell. Right now stations in CA charge $14/kg for it; that means a mid-size sedan (like the Toyota Mirai) costs more than 20 cents per mile to fuel; a plain gasoline Camry is like 9 cents a mile, and a Tesla Model 3 is ~3.4 cents per mile to charge. And that price is by making hydrogen with the relatively dirty steam reformation of natural gas method; the CO2-less method using renewable/nuclear power to electrolize water costs even more. And then there i

Hydrogen [Re: Big & Scary = Shack Up]

[Tablizer]

Japan is betting big on hydrogen. They feel if their infrastructure can change fast enough, hydrogen is the most rational in the longer term.

But that might not work for the US, which is spread out and politically more diverse. Coordinated change is harder here. The world car market may become fractured as each country selects a different default/common fuel infrastructure.

Ford and electric vehicles, getting more serious?

[Daralantan]

Haven't there been a few other stories about them working with and partnering with other electric vehicle companies as well? I remember something about them either buying Rivian or entering a partnership with them. I think there was also a story about them and 3 or 4 others working together in the past few weeks? It seems like I keep seeing Ford pop up about electric stuff - more than other traditional car companies.