Ford will start selling driverless cars in 2021

Ford said Tuesday that it wants to be first to roll out a completely automated transportation service. By 2021, it expects to win the race by beginning to make and sell thousands of robotic cars that can ferry passengers to and fro, without any human input other than the destination.

Like the prototypes being developed by Google, Ford’s self-driving vehicles won’t even have brake pedals or a steering wheel, executives say.

“We’re a high-volume manufacturer,” Raj Nair, Ford’s chief technology officer, said in an interview. “This is not a couple hundred development units in limited use. When we talk about high volume, it’s thousands of units — and sometimes more.”