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On July 31, Ford Motor announced that its subsidiary will acquire Journey, a transportation system software supplier, to accelerate the development of autonomous driving technology and promote the advancement of autonomous vehicle services.

The acquired Journey will merge with TransLoc, which was acquired by Ford in 2018 and is a software provider of supply, demand and fixed route systems for public and private transportation operations.

The day before the Journey acquisition, Ford also announced the acquisition of Quantum Signal, a U.S. military service provider, to build control systems that point to safety features and other automotive technologies.

Randy Visintainer, Ford's chief technology officer, said Quantum Signal's combination of software development and hardware prototyping in autonomous driving, as well as its experience in sensing and perception, will provide key technical support for Ford's development of autonomous vehicles.

From the current development point of view, Ford is ready to make a big splash in autonomous driving.

On July 12, Ford also announced a partnership with Volkswagen Group on autonomous driving and electric vehicles. Ford and Volkswagen plan to share the high costs of developing new technologies. The partnership saw Volkswagen invest $3.1 billion in Ford's self-driving company Argo AI, while Ford decided to buy electric car parts from Volkswagen in large quantities.

Argo AI, Ford's $1 billion self-driving company founded in 2016, has launched its third generation of driverless test vehicles. Argo AI currently provides Ford with Level 4 autonomous driving technology.

A few months ago, Ford announced a partnership with Agility Robotics to expand its self-driving home parcel delivery service. Ford also announced partnerships with Amazon, Lyft and others.

Of course, Ford also paid a huge price in the crazy "enclosure" in the field of autonomous driving.

Ford pushed ahead with corporate restructuring in Europe and South America last July, but the high cost of restructuring caused Ford's profits to fall precipitously. Ford's second-quarter profit was just $148 million, compared with $1.1 billion a year earlier.

To avoid losses, Ford launched a massive cost-cutting and efficiency program in Europe. Ford plans to cut 12000 jobs and close five factories in Europe by the end of next year.

Analysts on new energy vehicles say Ford's layoffs show that Ford's future direction will be toward autonomous driving and new energy vehicles. At present, Ford's main fuel models are hard to launch, and perhaps Ford has put its hopes on new energy vehicles.

Liu Rihai, president of Ford China Product Innovation, previously said that in the next three years, Ford will establish a new energy vehicle R & D center in China and launch more than 10 electric vehicle models.

From this point of view, Ford Motor has begun to attack and comprehensively develop new energy vehicles and autonomous driving technology, the new energy automobile industry is still in its infancy in China, and whether Ford's desperate efforts can achieve satisfactory results still needs to pass the test of practice.

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