Ford teams up with Google to build self-driving cars

Whether we, as driving enthusiasts, like it or not, there is no escaping the fact that autonomous cars are the next big thing in automotive evolution. Every carmaker worth its name is hard at work perfecting its own self-driving car, but Silicon Valley has clearly taken the lead in this race. So it only makes sense that they team up and make use of the resources of the other.

Now, according to a report from Yahoo Autos, Google and Ford are forming a partnership to build self-driving cars, a move that pairs one of the world's top automakers with one of the pioneering companies developing robo-car technology. The partnership is slated to be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas next month, the report stated, citing multiple anonymous sources.

Ford spokesman Alan Hall said the automaker would not comment on speculation.

"We have been and will continue working with many companies and discussing a variety of subjects related to our Ford Smart Mobility plan," Hall said. "We keep these discussions private for obvious competitive reasons, and we do not comment on speculation."

Meanwhile, the two companies have the connections and have laid the groundwork. Last year Google’s self-driving car group teamed up with Roush to develop and build a self-driving pod. Roush is building a test fleet of pods in Livonia, which are shipped to California where there is no snow to worry about.

In January, Chris Urmson, director of Self-Driving Cars for Google, said the Internet company's goal is to have driverless cars available on the market within five years. Still, experts say it will be many years before fully self-driving cars are actually available to the general public, with a slew of technology, regulatory and legal issues yet to be ironed out.