In a sign that autonomous cars are the future of the automobile industry, Ford Motor Co. announced early today that it is replacing Chief Executive Mark Fields with Jim Hackett, who currently serves as the head of Ford’s self-driving car initiative.

The last few years have been hard on Ford, which saw its shares drop by 40 percent during the three years Fields has served as CEO. In choosing Hackett (pictured) to replace Fields, the 113-year-old car maker seems to be saying that autonomous vehicles are even more integral to the future of the company than Fields had tried to emphasize.

“We’re moving from a position of strength to transform Ford for the future,” Executive Chairman Bill Ford said in a statement. “Jim Hackett is the right CEO to lead Ford during this transformative period for the auto industry and the broader mobility space. He’s a true visionary who brings a unique, human-centered leadership approach to our culture, products and services that will unlock the potential of our people and our business.”

Hackett added that he is looking forward to “working together with everyone tied to Ford during this transformative period.”

Ford has already been spending heavily on autonomous vehicle technology in the last year, including its pledge to invest more than $1 billion in Argo AI over the next five years. The company also announced last year that it intends to produce fully autonomous cars with no manually operated controls at all by 2021.

At the time, Fields said that Ford had held back on talking about autonomous vehicles because the company was “not in a race to make announcements. We’re not in a race to be first. We’re in a race to do what’s right for our customers and our business.”

Ford, who talked about making Ford a “mobility company,” also presided over relevant acquisitions such as last September’s $65 million purchase of San Francisco-based shuttle van startup Chariot Transit Inc. by Ford’s Smart Mobility unit, headed by the new CEO. But such acquisitions also exposed Ford’s dilemma: Mobility services like that could take more cars off the road and discourage auto sales. As Ali Vahabzadeh, founder and chief executive officer of Chariot Transit, told SiliconANGLE Media video studio theCUBE in March, “AI is going to take cars off the street.”

Still, Ford’s late start in autonomous vehicle research may have been one of the big strikes against Fields, whom Bloomberg reported today had been under pressure from the board for months. Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, says that Ford’s change in leadership could be a sign of how tech-focused companies like Tesla Inc. and even Google Inc. parent Alphabet Inc. are disrupting the auto industry.

“This is all about the direction the auto industry is going with the extra-added pressure of Wall Street,” Moorhead told SiliconANGLE. “With Tesla worth more than most car makers, Wall Street is valuing auto companies on the degree on their participation in the self-driving market. Tesla surprised everyone with their declaration that nearly every car purchased last year would be fully autonomous with software updates.”

The change in leadership appears to have renewed hope for investors in Ford, as the company’s shares have risen by more than 2 percent since Friday.

Photo: Ford