Dec. 22, 2015—Ford Motor Company may build Google’s next-generation autonomous cars, according to a report by Automotive News.
The companies have been negotiating a contract manufacturing deal, according to a source.
A spokesman for Google would not comment on the speculation, but Google officials confirmed that the company is talking with automakers.
“We work with a lot of tech companies all over the world. We keep these discussions private for obvious competitive reasons and we do not comment on speculation,” said Alan Hall, spokesman for Ford.
Hints have been dropped all year that Ford could be work with a tech company to accelerate its quest to bring self-driving cars to the market.
“It’s not only about what are the things that are going to be core to us but who are we going to partner with, in some cases,” said Mark Fields, Ford CEO, according to Automotive News. “Because I don’t think we can just be so arrogant to think that we’re going to do everything on our own and we’re going to do something better than maybe a company that does that 24/7. For us, partnerships are really important.”
Automotive News reported that an announcement could come as early as the week of Jan. 4.
