Ford wants to launch a fleet of thousands of self-driving cars in 2021

Anyone summoning a Ford self-driving taxi after the company's service launches in 2021 could be offered detours to sponsoring stores or wind up riding alongside packages out for delivery. At an event on Wednesday to showcase Ford's progress in developing autonomous vehicles, the carmaker said its driverless rides could be less than half the price of today's ride-share journeys,if the cars were used day and night and carried interactive adverts. The firm is also insistent that it is not lagging behind Waymo, which has promised a commercial self-driving taxi service by the end of this year, or GM, which says it will follow suit in 2019. "If we wanted to call a launch 100 vehicles [on the road] next year and go into some business, we could do that," said Sherif Marakby, CEO of Ford Autonomous Vehicles, a spin-off from the giant automaker tasked with developing autonomous technologies, vehicles, and services. "[But] we're an auto company and when we talk about launch at scale, we're talking tens of thousands vehicles, and [doing that] profitably. That's different from what others are thinking."