Argo takes different road with VW, Ford to skirt self-driving challenges
PITTSBURGH/DETROIT — Optimism about self-driving cars is giving way to tougher questions about how expensive automotive artificial intelligence will ever make a profit.
Those are questions the founders of Argo AI — and automaker partners Ford Motor and Volkswagen Group — are betting they can answer by taking a different road than more highly valued rivals. They are steering away from building an autonomous taxi fleet — sometimes called robotaxis — and focusing instead on getting paid by the mile by customers that will use robot vehicles for multiple purposes, including delivering goods or transporting groups of people in vans.