Ford Mobility: Smart Vehicles in a Smart World

At Ford, we have seen a lot of industry and societal changes that will impact our company. Traditionally we have used a one-to-one model: we produce a vehicle, sell it to a customer, and it is used for that purpose. While we continue this core service, we are also acting upon the current market dynamics and expanding to complementary services, particularly in ways where we could partner with cities. While determining specific uses cases is an ongoing task, here is an overview of current global realities, trend predictions, and how Ford may be able to contribute to future smart cities.

4 Global Realities Impacting the Transportation Industry

Today several shifts are requiring the transportation industry to take action in order to serve consumers better.

1. Urbanization: Cities are currently growing at a faster rate than suburban areas. In fact, while 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities today, by 2050 that number is expected to grow to 60-70 percent.
2. Growth of the Middle Class: With growing wages, more and more people are able to afford transportation, whether it is a personal vehicle, a shared vehicle or public transportation.
3. Concerns About Air Quality: Emissions regulations are starting to take effect in many cities, changing the way mobility is delivered.
4. Changing Attitudes: Younger generations have expressed different opinions about transportation, opting for shared ownership over private ownership.

Transportation Trends on the Horizon

From the current global realities, we extrapolate several predictions about what the future of transportation will look like. For example, in the next 5-10 years, we predict there will be:

• More electrified vehicles.
• The introduction of autonomous vehicles in the city (provided cities will accept it as a service). Ford is currently working on an SAE Level Four-capable vehicle right now where the driver is not engaged in operating the vehicle itself. Major auto competitors are at similar stages.
• The proliferation of connective vehicles and devices, plus an explosion of data. For example, we are currently collecting data on a million vehicles, but in just a few years it will be between 10-15 million.
• New infrastructure technology that will make it easier, safer, and more affordable to navigate the city.

Large-scale implementation of technologies like electrified and autonomous vehicles could have further consequences down the line, such as significant reductions in emissions and traffic accidents.

Using Transportation Data to Build Smarter Cities

At Ford, we see the potential for partnering with cities to offer services and share data they will need to make better decisions. We have a lot of data to offer, including:

• Sensor and camera data that detect surroundings including potholes, obstacles, and other aspects of the city environment, which may be useful in alerting cities about current problems that need to be addressed.
• Data about how vehicles are operating and how they need to be maintained, which could be useful for fleets, which are likely to expand as on-demand ridesharing becomes more and more popular.
• Information about driving patterns and driving habits that can pinpoint more specific patterns related to rush hour and traffic congestion.
• Spatial and temporal data that can be used to understand traffic accidents and other conditions in an effort to predict events or predict when things are going to break.
• Data about where vehicles go and where they stop and turn off, which can lead to inferences about how people travel and what their interests are.

At this point, there are several questions regarding how we capture and translate the data, how to make it useful to everyone who might have a stake in the information, how to ensure the data is secure, and how to manage the growing amount of data over time. By understanding the problems and priorities of cities, we seek to test out use cases and see how this valuable data can be put to work to help smart cities initiatives.