The vision behind the experiments Ford Smart Mobility is undertaking?
When you think about the city of tomorrow, the kind of expectations consumers have about what companies need to try out in that world is not limited to just being a vehicle manufacturer. They expect you to be a service innovator so that they have more reasons to buy a vehicle. I think all the work we have been doing through these experiments is learning about that aspiration. How people want to travel, how they want a relationship to evolve over time, what are they prepared to give up in terms of data so that you can be more responsive, how you respond to that cohesively at a city level… It’s a big challenge because with urbanisation, people are coming to cities at an unprecedented pace … if we don’t say we have the same aspiration of providing cities which are thriving that attract growth, jobs, eliminate accidents, make journeys more predictable, dynamic then we are going to create roadblocks to our success.
When you think about the city of tomorrow, the kind of expectations consumers have about what companies need to try out in that world is not limited to just being a vehicle manufacturer. They expect you to be a service innovator so that they have more reasons to buy a vehicle. I think all the work we have been doing through these experiments is learning about that aspiration. How people want to travel, how they want a relationship to evolve over time, what are they prepared to give up in terms of data so that you can be more responsive, how you respond to that cohesively at a city level… It’s a big challenge because with urbanisation, people are coming to cities at an unprecedented pace … if we don’t say we have the same aspiration of providing cities which are thriving that attract growth, jobs, eliminate accidents, make journeys more predictable, dynamic then we are going to create roadblocks to our success.