Ford is willing to do anything to be Competitive

The old-school insignia on the company's headquarters in Michigan looks out of place when compared with their ambitions to try and become a mobility company rivaling the likes of Google, Uber, and so on.

Nextcar Bug artTechnology has created quite a few Kodak moments for a number of established and iconic companies in the past, and many predict that this is exactly what's going to happen in the auto industry as well. 

 

Even though Ford isn't the only automaker who is transitioning into mobility right now, it is one of the most aggressive. For example, it plans to manufacture and deploy self-driving vehicles for autonomous ride-sharing services in 5 years. Last week, they even acquired Chariot, a van-pool service and announced a plan to expand bike sharing in San Francisco.

Ford knows how to multi-task. None of this really too ambitious, after all Ford is the inventor of the assembly line and they never needed a bailout like their rivals GM did. 

All of these plans are running alongside their ambitions to sell more trucks and cars to customers. In fact, they recently reduced their forecasts for 2017 because of an increased investment in mobility as well as other technologies.

 

The recently completed Further with Ford event had a number of the company's executives in some well-choreographed presentations and discussions. But the kingpins, particularly the chairman, Bill Ford, was unusually candid regarding the challenges and opportunities Ford will be facing when moving from selling cars to mobility.

Mark Fields, the CEO, suggested vehicle miles traveled are going to be more important as compared to the number of vehicles which have been sold. Raj Nair, product chief, said that Ford was disrupting its business intentionally since this change is now inevitable.

Ford is on top of their game. 

There are few things which are going to provoke a reaction from the auto industry stronger than suggesting that car companies are dinosaurs which are going to be usurped eventually by Silicon Valley. In an interview onstage, Bill Ford said that it wasn't only Apple and Google, but it was about start-ups by people who are spinning out from Apple or Google. Ford is going to have to compete with all these people. They will have to compete with Ford too! 

He did say that Ford needed to be more open to partnerships, and that is why they are building up their presence in Silicon Valley. What is wrong with have more friends? 

Ford said that he has spoken with Valley executives over the last few years, and they have all said that automakers are going to end up like handset makers or low-margin assemblers of cool technology for machines and devices other people are making. See Dell Computer!  

But he did also say that this conversation has now shifted to understanding that automakers bring knowledge with regard to integrating technology into vehicles in a way others don't have experience with. To build vehicles with quality is much harder than what others may think.

 

This is something Google learned while it was facing defection from key personnel on their self-driving team. The autonomous efforts at Apple too seem to have come to a standstill because of this. Tech companies are quickly discovering that it's going to require much more strength as compared to what they believed a few years ago.

But even though they are embracing Silicon Valley, Ford has insisted that they have no plans of changing their name from the Ford Motor Company to something that will reflect their modern outlook. We're pretty sure this means they are not going to change the old-fashioned logo of the brand either. No reason to do that. It got them this far after all!