As part of the agreements reached, Ford will gain access to Google's developments in technology, and the American automaker, in turn, will allow the internet giant to reduce costs for creating its own production facility.
It is worth noting that Ford began testing self-driving cars only this year, while Google has been working on this development for about seven years. To date, 53 Google cars are in operation in California and Texas, which have collectively covered about 2 million kilometers in fully automatic mode.
As for other manufacturers, the most advanced at the moment are considered to be Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Volvo, Nissan, and a number of other companies planning to equip their production models with a full-fledged autopilot system by 2020.
