Ford Motor is just two years away from offering technology that will allow drivers to take their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel, according to Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley.
“We’re getting really close,” Farley said in a May 31 interview with Bloomberg TV’s David Westin. “We can do it now pretty regularly with a prototype, but doing it in a cost-effective way is just the progress we’re going to need to make.”
Farley believes Ford can make that progress quickly enough to be offering the feature in 2026, which could make it the first mass market car brand to offer what auto engineers call Level 3 autonomy.
That’s where the car takes over the driving task under certain conditions, enabling the driver to divert their attention to other tasks.
“Level 3 autonomy will allow you to go hands and eyes off the road on the highway in a couple years so then your car becomes like an office,” Farley said. “You could do a conference call and all sorts of stuff.”
