Ford Motor Co and Volkswagen AG have announced that they are expanding their global alliance to include electric vehicles and will collaborate with Argo AI to introduce autonomous-vehicle technology in the USA and Europe, “positioning both companies to better serve customers while improving their competitiveness and cost and capital efficiencies”.

Herbert Diess (Volkswagen CEO), Jim Hackett (Ford president and CEO) and Bryan Salesky (Argo AI CEO) confirmed that Volkswagen will join Ford in investing in Argo AI, the autonomous-vehicle technology platform company.

Argo AI’s self-driving system is the first with commercial deployment plans for Europe and the USA; by being able to tap into both vehicle manufacturers’ ‘global reach’, Argo AI’s platform has “the largest geographic deployment potential of any autonomous-driving technology to date”.

Mr Hackett (www.media.ford.com) said: “While Ford and Volkswagen remain independent — and fiercely competitive in the market-place — teaming up and working with Argo AI on this important technology will allow us to deliver unmatched capability, scale and geographic reach.

"Unlocking the synergies across a range of areas allows us to showcase the power of our global alliance in this era of smart vehicles for a smart world.”

It has also been announced that Ford will become the first additional automotive manufacturer to use Volkswagen’s dedicated electric-vehicle architecture and Modular Electric Toolkit (MEB) to deliver a high-volume zero-emission vehicle in Europe (starting in 2023).

Moreover, Ford says it expects to deliver more than 600,000 European vehicles using the MEB architecture over six years.