Ford Motor Co. became the world's first automaker to announce hard plans to deliver driverless cars. "We'll have mass-produced, fully autonomous cars on the road in five years," said Raj Nair, head of global product development, at an event Tuesday in Palo Alto, Calif. Ford said the cars would be first used for ride hailing and ride sharing, but no companies were named. A few years after that, the company plans to roll out driverless cars to consumers. All the carmakers, plus Google and maybe Apple, are working on driverless cars, but none has announced firm dates.

Ford Motor Co. and the Chinese search engine company Baidu will each invest 75 million in Velodyne LiDAR Inc., a company that makes laser sensors that help guide self-driving cars. Velodyne, based in said it will use the 150-million investment to expand design and production and reduce the cost of its sensors. The laser sensors are called Lidar, which is short for "light detection and ranging." They also can be used in conventional vehicles as part of driver-assist systems such as automatic emergency braking. Velodyne said lower costs will enable the sensors to be used in all vehicles to make roads safer.