Ford's New Research Center In Silicon Valley Will Focus On Self-Driving Cars And Other Experimental Projects

Ford has opened a new research center, called Research and Innovation Center, in Silicon Valley that will focus on experimental projects such as self-driving cars.

"We want to be viewed as part of the ecosystem here in Silicon Valley," Ford CEO Mark Fields said in a statement at the Palo Alto-based center Thursday. "It's a marketplace of ideas; it's really important to be here."

Ford said it plans to have 125 researchers, engineers and scientists working at the research center by the end of this year. The company has hired Dragos Maciuca - an Apple senior engineer - to lead the research center.

The research center located in the Stanford University hopes to partner with the university as well to accelerate the development of the self driving cars. The company is donating one of its autonomous vehicles to the university's engineering department, which will use it to test a route-planning and prediction algorithm - what Ford's vice-president of advanced engineering Ken Washington called the "secret sauce" of self-driving cars, Mashable reported.

Ford also previewed a slew of its experimental projects at the new center. One of the many includes adding support for Google's Nest Platform to Ford cars. The project will connect vehicles to the smart thermostat, so temperatures will automatically adjust when users leave home.

Another project includes remotely controlling golf carts on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus from the research center via 4G/LTE.