News from Ford: they've sold their stake in Velodyne and appear to be committing to using Argo AI's Lidar product.
For those unaware Ford seemed to be playing it safe by investing in both Velodyne and Argo AI, which both have Lidar products. Likely so if one didn't work out at least they had a backup option.
IMO the timing of this move is interesting. Ford was one of the first EAP customers so should have been one of BRNs first customers to receive the test boards around November. Assuming Ford passed the boards directly on to Argo AI, this would have given them a reasonable amount of time to test Akida with some if not all of its sensors including Lidar.
If Ford no longer require Velodyne, this indicates to me that either the Argo AI lidar product has been proven to be equal or superior or Velodyne's product. Keep in mind that since Argo AI is doing the ADAS for Ford, they would likely prefer to keep everything with the one company if possible as integration and politics would be much smoother.
Ford wouldn't be making this move lightly. As others have mentioned previously, their reputation depends on their cars so they must have thoroughly vetted the Argo Lidar. The last stage of signing off on this IMO would be hooking it up to Akida and taking it on a test run to confirm it works as expected with ultra low power consumption.
If this is true, Ford / Argo AI has now validated Akida.
Therefore, Ford would now be in the lawyer stage. As FF indicated earlier it's not unusual for this to take 3-6 months. As painful as waiting may be, hopefully we have signatures by mid year.
However, it's possible an agreement may have already been drafted ready to go pending successful verification given the EAP was signed half a year ago. If so, it may not be long till we get a Ford announcement.
Pure speculation, DYOR
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/samabuelsamid/2021/02/15/fordsells-velodyne-stake-likely-to-use-argo-lidar-for-2022-automated-vehicle/amp/
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