The Ford Motor Company has established Latitude AI, a wholly owned subsidiary focused on developing a hands-free, eyes-off-the-road, automated driving system. Through Latitude, Ford will look to expand its current development efforts in the category of autonomous driving technologies – such as its BlueCruise ADAS.
Latitude itself aims to offer an enhanced user experience by offering automated driving features primarily designed for use during bumper-to-bumper traffic, or on long stretches of highway. In establishing the subsidiary, Ford will also look to strength its focus on automated driving technologies for personally owned vehicles. The OEM hired many former employees of its Argo AI subsidiary across areas such as machine learning and robotics, cloud platforms, mapping, sensors and compute systems, test operations, systems and safety engineering.
Sammy Omari, Ford’s Executive Director of ADAS Technologies, will serve as the subsidiary’s CEO. Peter Carr is its Chief Technology Officer, overseeing Latitude’s product and technical development, while David Gollob will be its President – responsible for business operations. Latitude is headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA with additional engineering hubs in Dearborn, MI and Palo Alto, CA. In addition to these facilities, the new company will also operate a highway-speed test track facility in Greenville, SC.
