In four years Ford will be mass producing cars without a steering wheel, accelerator pedal or brake pedal.

The company believes that the future of the market lies in producing vehicles where a driver is not even required.

It has just announced a $1bn (£800m) investment in Argo AI, an artificial intelligence company which will produce the software needed for a new generation of self-driving cars.

Ford’s investment over five years will see the new company develop the software needed to make self drive cars a reality, initially in cities and then across a wider area.

It expects to profit from not only having its own autonomous car on the road in 2021, but by licensing the technology to other companies, including rival manufacturers.

Ford believes that the cost of owning, maintaining and parking a car in a city means that people will look for an alternative way of getting around and that is where its vision comes in.

The simplest way to look at the technology is to see it as the logical next step from a car club – or perhaps Uber without a driver.

A trip to the supermarket, for example, would entail summoning a self-drive car using a mobile phone app to get there and then repeating the process to go home with a week’s groceries.