What Ford and Volkswagen will do together

Volkswagen AG CEO Herbert Diess and Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Hackett announce the companies’ expanded collaboration.

AN expanded collaboration between Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG will see the companies sharing technologies in electric vehicles, pickup trucks and vans, as well as Volkswagen adding to Ford’s investment in an artificial intelligence (AI) firm.

Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess, Ford president and CEO Jim Hackett and Argo AI CEO Bryan Salesky on Friday announced Volkswagen is joining Ford in investing in Argo AI, the autonomous vehicle technology platform company.

Working together with Ford and Volkswagen, Argo AI’s self-driving system (SDS) is the first with commercial deployment plans for Europe and the US.  By being able to tap into both automakers’ global reach, Argo AI’s platform has the largest geographic deployment potential of any autonomous driving technology to date.

For their part, Ford and Volkswagen will independently integrate Argo AI’s SDS into purpose-built vehicles.

The two companies clarified their global alliance does not involve cross-ownership between them. Ford and Volkswagen will have an equal — and majority — stake in Argo AI.

In the deal Ford will use Volkswagen’s dedicated electric vehicle architecture and Modular Electric Toolkit, or MEB, to make zero-emission vehicles in Europe starting in 2023. The company aims to make more than 600,000 vehicles using the MEB architecture over six years while also considering a second all-new Ford model for Europe.

The carmakers are also on track to deliver pickup trucks for global customers starting in 2022, followed by commercial vans.