Ford Mobility Seeks Municipal Partners

LOS ANGELES – Ford’s road to becoming a mobility company will include working with cities and municipalities as it searches for the right mix of partners to help it realize a future in which ride sharing and other transportation options are prevalent.

“We really are on the cusp of a mobility revolution and at Ford we are very excited about that because we’ve literally spent more than 100 years getting ready for this moment,” says Ford CEO Mark Fields at the opening of Automobility LA ahead of the Los Angeles auto show.

“We clearly understand that achieving this success will not be done on our own. It will require working together and partnering and listening to others,” Fields says.

“Beginning next year, we will be directly engaging city leaders, tech visionaries, urban planners, designers and local communities – bringing public and private together – to discuss and develop solutions for the transportation system that can improve people’s lives in ways we can only just begin to imagine.”

Fields notes Ford already has a number of mobility partners including San Francisco-based bicycle-sharing company Motivate and firms developing autonomous vehicles it intends to put into ride-sharing and ride-hailing service by 2021.

One part of Ford’s mobility group is Chariot, a company that uses 12-passenger Ford Transit vans to provide a cost-effective shuttle service in San Francisco. Chariot is adding service in Austin and will expand into four more cities in the next 15 months.

“While we will continue to make great vehicles, they are no longer our entire game,” Fields says. “Today, we’re not only dreaming about the road of tomorrow, but also focused on creating the city of tomorrow, which means continuing to find ways to make people’s lives better, whether they own a car or not.”

Another partner in the endeavor is former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who leads a coalition of government officials worldwide striving to develop and accelerate mobility solutions, Fields says.

Rao leads Ford mobility effort.

Ford’s vision is moving forward under the leadership of Rajendra Rao, CEO-Ford Smart Mobility, and a new entity called City Solutions. John Kwant, vice president-City Solutions, says the group intends to work with some 80 to 100 cities around the world to identify and research transportation system solutions.

Cities can play a problem-solving role in everything from establishing limits on vehicle use in inner cities to simple problems like use of curb lanes for parking and drop-off and pick-up of passengers and goods, Kwant says.

But Ford knows a one-size-fits-all solution won’t work for diverse cities.

“We think that a multimodal solution is what a city is going to require,” Rao says. “If you look at the demand side, they want a user interface that provides them as much optionality as possible across multiple modes of travel and multiple suppliers. And they will pick the most efficient outcome they prefer.”

[email protected] @bobgritzinger