Self-driving cars would be cool, but there's no way they could function in northern climates. They need to see lane marking on the road. Severe weather would interfere with their sensors.

That's been a leading criticism against the viability of self-driving cars. But is it true?

Ford silenced a slew of critics this year with the first publicly demonstrated test of autonomy in snow -- or "snowtonomy" as they call it.

They're engineers, not wordsmiths.

The autonomous Ford Fusion Hybrid test vehicle has redundant sensors that are constantly monitored for impaired performance caused by snow or ice buildup. If one or two should fail, the car can keep driving. The autonomous car can also locate itself with 140 times the precision of GPS, even without being able to see lines on the road that are blanketed with snow.

Ford's research into self-driving cars is why they are able to provide features like automatic emergency braking (AEB) and pedestrian detection on the new Ford vehicles for sale in North Platte. Ford has pledged to make AEB a standard safety feature on all new vehicles within the next six years.