Ford abandons project to develop Tesla-like electronic brain
Need for speed
The failed project marks a significant setback for Ford as it races alongside Detroit rivals General Motors and Jeep-maker Stellantis to develop more sophisticated electronics and software. Nailing these systems is among any carmaker's primary goals, industry experts say, because they provide a framework for car makers to deliver better vehicles more quickly.
'The only strategic advantage any company can have is speed,' said Terry Woychowski, president at engineering company Caresoft Global, while showing off the complicated guts of these electrical systems at the company's warehouse.
Farley said as much in a September interview with Reuters.
'We're completely committed to building that software-enabled vehicles, not just for our EVs, but even more exciting, in a way, for our next generation of ICE [internal combustion engine] and hybrid vehicles,' he noted.
Ford's next generation software was meant to be a 'zonal' system, in which bundles of smaller software brains control the functions in specific parts of the vehicle and communicate with a larger central brain. Such a system shortens the length of the expensive vehicle wiring harnesses and allows for speedier over-the-air updates.
These advanced systems also provide opportunities to entice drivers to buy software-enabled features, such as assisted-driving systems, sometimes through subscriptions. Ford's vice-chair and former CEO John Lawler said in 2023 that FNV4 had the potential to accelerate and increase the number of services on each vehicle sold.
Big investments, losses
While these electrical systems are dependent on lines of virtual code that developers type and refine over years, they also require expensive hardware that can fundamentally change an carmaker's manufacturing process.
FNV4 development contributed to Ford's losses on software and EVs, which totalled $4.7bn (R87.37bn) in 2023 and $5bn (R92.84bn) in 2024.
'The electrical architecture system in a vehicle is one of the most challenging areas from an assembly perspective,' said Woychowski, describing their sprawling wiring harnesses as 'copper anacondas'.
When Reuters asked Farley about the programme in September, he said the company had its first prototype vehicle running completely on Ford software. Farley said at the time that Ford was on track to deliver the next-generation architecture and that a prototype had impressed him.
'For me as a car person,' he said, 'I was like, 'Are you kidding me?''
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