LAS VEGAS—As we've noted elsewhere, CES has now evolved to be part car show. But not just any car show—the focus is on how technology is transforming the car, and nowhere is that more evident than in autonomous driving. The goal is to get to "level four"—the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's highest level of self-driving vehicle, capable of getting from point A to point B without any human driver intervention. We're not there yet—no one in the industry Ars has spoken to recently thinks the tech challenges are quite solved yet—but research vehicles from companies like Google, Delphi, Audi, and Ford are testing out the hardware and software necessary to get us to that point. With that in mind, we spoke to Wayne Williams, who gave us a quick tour of one of Ford's fully autonomous hybrid Fusions.

Ford has chosen the Fusion hybrid as its autonomous driving platform in part because as a hybrid, the vehicles have a beefed up electrical system and they're completely drive-by-wire, which makes computer control of the steering, brakes, and throttle much simpler. From the outside, you can tell something is special about the autonomous car, thanks to the roof rack and its spinning Velodyne lidar sensors, which are the primary way the vehicles are aware of the world around them (there are also optical cameras, and the cars can use information from radar sensors, too).

It's even more obvious that something special is going on inside the trunk, where there are lots of boxes and cables that take information from the sensors, fuse it together, and then decide what to do in order to get to the planned destination. (For a deeper look at what's going on in the trunk, check out our report from August, when we visited Ford.)

According to Williams, one of the main things Ford is focusing on right now is getting the autonomous cars to be as smooth as possible. After all, no one's going to want a self-driving car if a ride in one leaves them in white-knuckled fear. Currently, the Dearborn-based OEM has a fleet of 10 autonomous Fusions, which have been testing in Arizona, California, and Michigan, both on the public roads and at places like the University of Michigan's Mcity research center. Contrary to rumors, there was no announcement about a Ford/Google joint venture at CES. Instead, Ford announced that it plans to expand its fleet of self-driving Fusions up to 30.

And just today at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the company revealed that unlike all its rivals, it's now conducting those tests in the snow. “It’s one thing for a car to drive itself in perfect weather,” said Jim McBride, Ford technical leader for autonomous vehicles. “It’s quite another to do so when the car’s sensors can’t see the road because it’s covered in snow. Weather isn’t perfect, and that’s why we’re testing autonomous vehicles in wintry conditions—for the roughly 70 percent of US residents who live in snowy regions.”

The testing involves creating HD maps accurate to a few centimeters and including data about what's above ground level. That way, when a blanket of snow covers the road, the car is still able to position itself with the accuracy required (GPS is not nearly sensitive enough for this task). A major criticism of self-driving technology recently has been the propensity for research vehicles to be confused in all but the best weather. We're not at level four yet—outside of a few well-mapped areas and research centers like Mcity—but it's coming.

Listing image by Ford