Ford executive chairman Bill Ford said that federal and state officials will have to tackle the thorny issues regarding the ethics of autonomous vehicles, before they hit the U.S. market.
Ford also said that developing the hardware and software for a self-driving car is going to be easy compared to deciding what the vehicle should do in the event of a life-or-death situation, according to Detroit News.
“The difficult piece is going to be all the enabling things around it. Things like ethics, things like regulations,” Ford said during an appearance at The Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.
“Ethics in the vehicle itself, i.e. does the vehicle make the decision to save you, the occupant, or to save 10 pedestrians if the right thing might be to hurt you the occupant,” he added. “Those all have to be thought through and no one manufacturer is going to be able to program in one ethical equation that is different than the others. I mean, that would be chaos. And imagine the fun the trial lawyers would have with that too.”
The company plans to build its first fully autonomous vehicle for use in ride-hailing or ride-sharing services by 2021. Ford said that the company will look very different in the next five to 10 years, if they meet their self-driving car deadline.
“We should be less capital intensive, less cyclical, much closer to the customer, and help cities sort out their issues,” he said. “We will be making vehicles. It’s something we do and we do well. But into those vehicles … will be going lots of software, lots of connectivity. … I think we’ll always be making vehicles. But how they behave, how they interact and who is in them may all be different.”
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