A Discussion With Ford CEO About Autonomous Cars

Self-driving vehicles offer a host of benefits to society, including improving passenger and pedestrian safety, reducing traffic jams, as well as offering alternatives to elderly and handicapped individuals. There are many different technology companies are working on self driving technology (through companies similar to https://torc.ai/careers/), bringing the future to our doorstep. And with the opening of Ford Research Center in Silicon Valley, the future of autonomous cars seem so close.

“Ford Research Center demonstrates the company’s commitment to participate in the technical innovation driven by Silicon Valley companies,” said in a statement of Ford Motor Company President and CEO Mark Fields. These technologies will include connectivity, mobility, and autonomous vehicles. Dragos Maciuca, formerly with Apple and Lockheed Martin, will serve as the research center’s technical leader.

Joining a region that is already home to the world’s largest carmaker labs — including BMW, GM, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Renault-Nissan Alliance, Tesla, Toyota and Volkswagen — Ford wanted to accelerate the development of systems that will be enabled on its cars in the future. “The car is the biggest consumer electronics device you can have. And that’s the energy that both Silicon Valley and Detroit are recognizing,” said Ford CTO Raj Nair.

Ford is a good example of how every company is now a technology company. At CES 2015, CEO Fields’ keynote shined the light on how the company is thinking beyond vehicles to being more of a transportation analytics outfit. The challenge for Ford will be absorbing data from cars and people in various mobile experiments, and then discovering what can be used to build a business around–for example, vehicle quality, insurance costs, car sharing, transportation analysis, and solving societal problems.

Being a neighbor with the world’s biggest tech companies, Ford intends to attract and retain talent by giving them meaningful and interesting work, beyond competitive compensations. Earlier this year, BMW’s first Hackathon was held in San Francisco with the attendance of hundreds of developers from many cities around the States. And what BMW offered as the prize to the winner was impressive: a $42,000 BMW i3 electric car.

In order to discuss about autonomous cars as well as other wide-ranging topics, Forbes had the interview with Ford CEO Mark Field:

FORBES: Why did you decide to expand Ford’s presence in Silicon Valley?

Mark Fields: We’ve been here since 2012 and we also obviously worked with companies in the Valley for many, many years but our first location was in 2012. And we’re here celebrating the launch of our research and innovation center to really accelerate our work around Ford’s smart mobility in the areas of mobility, autonomous vehicles, connected cars, the whole customers’ experience and big data. And we’re going to staff this lab and this research center up to 125 folks. And we will be one of the largest dedicated automotive research teams here in the Valley. And they will plug-in to our network of product development centers and research centers around the world.

FORBES: Is Silicon Valley the new Detroit?

Fields: We view this as not displacing work that we do in Detroit. But we view it as a complement to the talent that we have in Detroit. And here, in the Valley, the wonderful thing about the Valley is, it’s a marketplace of ideas. And we look at the talent, the creativity here and the interest in the car, that’s why it’s important for us to be here so that we can partner with folks, etc. and complement the other talent that we have around the world working on other parts of the vehicle.

FORBES: Most of your competitors also have a venture arm in Silicon Valley to invest in innovative startups. What’s your stand on that?

Fields: We’re not specifically focusing on venture investments. Part of that is, there’s a good side and there’s a bit of downside on that, because if you find a technology and you decide to invest in it, what happens if 6 months later a new type of technology comes through and you’re already vested in another one. So we want to make sure that we leave ourselves the degrees of freedom and have the relationships so that when we look at developments we’re not handcuffed maybe by decisions we made previously from a financial standpoint.

FORBES: When do you expect fully autonomous vehicles on roads?

Fields: We have semi-autonomous vehicles on the road today which are the building blocks for fully autonomous vehicles down the road. Our vehicles today will help stay in your lane, they’ll help you park your car whether it’s parallel or perpendicular parking, they’ll adjust your speed based on traffic flow and potentially apply the brakes. So we have, as well as the industry has semi-autonomous building blocks towards fully autonomous vehicles. Our view is within the next 5 years, probably somebody will come out with a fully autonomous vehicle and maybe a pre-defined area that you can map and where the environment is right for the sensors. Our approach is we may or may not come out with a [fully autonomous] vehicle in that time-frame because our approach is when we do, we want to make sure that it is accessible for everyone and not just let’s say luxury [car] customers.

FORBES: What’s your take on electric cars, especially with oil prices the way they are today?

Fields: They will be part of the landscape of the industry. The question is, how big. And our approach as a company is offer the customer choices, give them the power of choice. So we have a full lineup of electrified vehicles (conventional hybrid, plug-in hybrids, battery electric vehicles) and give them that choice. With oil prices where there at right now, clearly customer acceptance of that new technology and the cost of it is critical to how big it will be. And right now, what we’re seeing is despite the proliferation of electrified vehicles it’s not growing much. So as we go forward to meet our fuel economy requirements and as we go forward with the government for the mid-term review, that will be part of the conversation: the feasibility around reaching those goals in the time-frame that it was set.

FORBES: How do you see Ford’s future in this new mobile, real-time and sharing economy dominated by Uber-like services?

Fields: We are thinking ourselves more as mobility company just as much as a car and truck company. Because we’re thinking about, in major urban areas where there is going to be more congestion and maybe less cars per 100 folks, how do we help be part of the solution of that congestion but also, is there a business in there that makes sense for us. That’s why we’re doing those 25 experiments around the world. Because what these experiments will do for us, first we think it will advance the discussion around mobility which we feel it’s important from a societal standpoint, it will allow us to understand – and in various parts of the world, help – how people are viewing their mobility challenges; and thirdly it’s going to expose us to a lot of new partners that we may decide to go forward with. But it’s all helping us to hopefully provide solutions that will help change the way the world moves.

Ford, obviously, is thinking big. The company is aiming to become the Apple of the auto industry by working on the gap between the hardware and software — integration and intelligence. They have their plans already, and the matter now is that how will they execute them.

Connie loves to hear your feedback, so feel free to email her or add her on LinkedIn.