Twenty-five projects that reinvent mobility from scratch. That is the new initiative that Ford recently announced it was undertaking in an effort to figure out the transportation of the future. This project is about the changes now underway in our cities and also the changing habits of urban residents. Cities all over the world will be part of this experiment, from London to Atlanta, New York to Bangalore, and the list goes on. There are solutions that address parking issues and the use of on-demand vehicles, and they are gathering data about how people get around, the social side of using public transportation, and many more things besides. All the projects trace their origin back to the technology revolution that will soon see all vehicles connected to the web, to each other and to the smart cities of the future.We met with Ken Washington, vice president of Research and Advanced Engineering for Ford, to talk about this new vision at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where Ford presented two smart bicycle prototypes. Both MoDe:Me and MoDe:Pro can be folded up and put in a car or van, then taken out so that commuters or delivery people can navigate their way through the traffic and exhaust to reach their final destination quickly and easily. ‘It’s really exciting to see so many startups around the world interested in offering intelligent solutions to resolve issues of mobility and meeting the challenges that people face. It’s through building alliances with this movement that we hope to try out as many solutions as possible so we can take the best ones and make them part of our ecosystem, because a major key to the vehicle of the future will be having lots of these features already integrated. For example, help finding parking in innovative ways or using cars only when we really need them’, explains Washington.The “MoDe:Me” smart bicycle prototype by Ford that makes the commute to work faster, cheaper and less damaging for the environment.You talk a lot about connected cars and the services that they will be able to offer passengers, such as watching movies or news in real time. But what will be the relationship between these intelligent vehicles and smart cities?Exploring how the city itself can become one of our potential customers is an important part of our experiments. We are working with cities like London to develop new car sharing options, and in several cities throughout Germany we are testing how cars can interact with road sensors positioned for example on signs and traffic signals. Naturally this would allow us to develop connected vehicles that will become ever more integrated and communicate better with the civilian infrastructure, which in the future could lead to the development of self-driving vehicles that will no longer need to be driven by humans.What will be the future evolution of car manufacturers?We no longer consider ourselves just a car and truck manufacturer. We see ourselves as a technology company that offers mobility solutions and we want to come up with innovations based on what we learn by experimenting on the ground. We opened a new research centre at the beginning of this year in Palo Alto, in the Silicon Valley, where the most innovative companies in the world are based. We did it because we want to be part of the technology community so that we can transform our vehicles and our services. In order to create the mobility solutions of the future we will need a wide range of skills and experiences.Virtual reality and simulation are at the heart of a lot of innovation across different sectors. Are you interested in the opportunities that might come from that?Certainly. In Palo Alto we are developing an experiment using the same software that is used to make videogames so that we can accelerate the test phase of our self-driving vehicles. Basically before we ever take these cars on the road we want to understand if they are up to the challenge of driving themselves using sensors. So we do experiments in a simulated environment that not only replicates reality visually, but also according to the laws of physics, making it a true virtual city. That way we can understand if it is more effective to use cameras, sensors, or Lidar, which is a technology based on the use of lasers, to make sure that the vehicle can avoid obstacles and prevent accidents.Go to the gallery
