Ford aimed for moon with autonomous vehicles, found a black hole

Aug. 16, 2016, was meant to be Mark Fields' big moment.

That's when Fields announced, in unambiguous terms, Ford's moonshot goal.

"Ford is going to be mass producing vehicles with full autonomy in five years," Fields said. "That means there is going to be no steering wheel, there is not going to be a gas pedal, there is not going to be a brake pedal, and of course, a driver is not going to be required."

Six years, billions of dollars and two CEOs later, Ford is not doing that. Or anything even close.

Finance chief John Lawler concedes that such an achievement is still "five-plus years away," meaning the technology is still as far from reality as Ford believed it was when Fields made his proclamation.

But rather than continuing to string shareholders along or create excuses, Ford did something rather astounding last week. It stopped lighting money on fire in pursuit of a goal it had severely underestimated.

"Things have changed," CEO Jim Farley said in an Oct. 26 statement. "Profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are a long way off."

This abrupt shift includes a plan to shut down Argo AI, which was a little-known startup when Ford poured $1 billion into it in the waning months of Fields' tenure. With the backing of Ford and later Volkswagen Group, Argo came to be viewed as one of the industry's top self-driving tech companies.

But as it started to have trouble attracting more investors and its timelines drifted further into the future, Ford decided to focus on driver-assist technology it can deploy and make money from sooner.

The idea of autonomous vehicles is by no means dead. Cruise -- backed by General Motors and Honda -- and Waymo have launched robotaxi services in limited geographic areas in the U.S.

A number of other companies say they are close to commercializing more specialized autonomous technology, such as trucks to haul freight over long distances or vehicles that stick to limited-access highways, avoiding exponentially more challenging urban settings.

However, it's clear that the nap-through-your-commute utopia some envisioned when the industry began embracing the concept of autonomy will remain sci-fi fantasy for the near term.

Tesla -- which had promised to put 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020 and whose CEO, Elon Musk, continues to insist that autonomy is just around the corner -- is reportedly under criminal investigation in the U.S. for claims related to the costly upgrade it sells called Full Self Driving.

'A scam'

All told, an estimated $75 billion has been spent on autonomous vehicle development, Bloomberg reported, yet every vehicle that Ford or any other automaker sells today still requires a steering wheel, pedals and a wide-awake driver.

"It's a scam," George Hotz, president of driver-assist technology company Comma.ai, told Bloomberg recently.

That's why Ford's decision to take a step back is so notable. After Tesla became one of the most valuable companies on Earth based more on grandiose promises than its financial reality, other automakers have been desperate for a whiff of the same adoration that Wall Street has for Musk. Putting its autonomy ambitions on the back burner risks drawing criticism and mockery from the Teslarati, but it's the kind of practicality and profit-focused approach that investors should appreciate.

It also demonstrates another quality that has been rare for an industry with a long history of dumb decisions and bad bets, but one that automakers will need as they navigate the murkiness ahead — a willingness to admit being wrong.