Ford is in talks with Google about the prospect of building the search engine giant’s autonomous car, first unveiled in 2013.
Reports suggest the talks have been going on for some time, though a Ford spokesman was non-committal on the subject, saying that his company “worked 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”.
Google was equally tight-lipped, but co-founder Sergey Brin has gone on record to say that they were looking to partner up with manufacturers. Ex-boss of Ford Alan Mulally is already on Google’s board of directors.
Such a partnership would work for both partners, with Ford benefiting from Google’s self-drive tech and software development and Google getting access to Ford’s huge manufacturing potential.
As yet there is no indication that any resulting vehicle would go under the name of Foogle.
