[CES 2016] Ford continues to look forward into the future of vehicle technology by showcasing the Fusion Hybrid automated research vehicle. As you can tell by its name, this will be the Ford Fusion Hybrid, and what makes it different from a regular Fusion Hybrid model would be the inclusion of hardware within that makes it a research unit on wheels. Of course, the inclusion of the new hardware that helps it to facilitate its research makes it look rather unwieldy, but they are a necessary evil, of course. The quartet of LiDAR sensors are capable of generating a real-time 3D map of the surrounding environment as you can see in the image above.
What is the reason behind this capability being integrated into a vehicle? Well, it will function as a research platform in order to have it develop potential solutions to long-term societal, legislative, and technological issues which are bound to occur at a far higher frequency simply becuse of the presence of fully autonomous vehicles.
One should also remember that Ford themselves have taken the step to triple its fleet of self-driving research cars for the rest of the year ahead of us – surely a 2016 resolution that is worth keeping.