John Rich Title Director of Autonomous Vehicle and Technology Development Affiliation Ford AV LLC John Rich was appointed Director of Autonomous Vehicle and Technology Development in November 2019. Prior to this appointment, Rich was the Chief Operating Officer of Ford’s AV LLC. AV LLC is a wholly owned Ford entity created in 2017 to bring autonomous vehicles and services to market while also serving as the holding company for Ford’s interest in Argo AI, a leading full-stack SAE Level 4 autonomous technology developer. In these roles, Rich has delivered significant business results, including: Leading Ford’s autonomous vehicle engineering team to deliver four generations of autonomous prototypes in just over 30 months Establishing a shared development approach and managing a tightly coupled technical integration with Argo AI to deliver SAE Level 4 autonomy Securing partnership and joint investment into Argo from Volkswagen Group, establishing a $7.2B valuation for Argo Establishing physical operations – terminals and development sites – in three beach-head AV markets (Miami, Washington DC, and Austin) Developing in-house AV applications for remote (tele-) operations, infrastructure based sensing, and low-speed autonomous shuttles Acquiring Quantum Signal AI, LLC to be a dedicated in-house AI job shop focused on robotics applications Prior to his current role, Rich was Executive Director of Global Strategy based in Dearborn, Michigan. As the company moved to address the hard realities of disruption, he worked in collaboration with Business Development to restructure failing regions, establish key partnerships (Mahindra, VW, and Argo), and reallocate capital away from marginal businesses. Past Events Finally Doing It Making the Big Decision: It is worth the risk to deploy Driverless Mobility for ALL in an Operational Design Domain Thu, Feb 11, 2021, 12:00 pm