[DeTomaso] NPC: ti's a good time to be in....

[Larry - Ohio Time]

Ken Washington, Ford's new VP of research and advanced engineering
 
Global trends appear to be moving towards a future where in many markets,
car ownership may look like an expensive, impractical and inconvenient way
to get around. So what's the next model of personal transport, and where do
the big automakers fit in? Ford's new global VP of Research and Advanced
Engineering, Ken Washington, sat down in Melbourne for a "crystal ball"
discussion about autonomous cars, on-demand vehicles, car sharing, smart
parking, multi-mode transport, and how a car company might learn to cater to
a new generation of customers that are far more interested in upgrading
their phones than getting their driver's licenses.
Over the last 100 years, auto manufacturers have created a fairly stable
relationship with their customers. People buy cars more or less as soon as
they can afford them, and enjoy a freedom of mobility that was unavailable
to them beforehand. Cars transform our lives and they're a symbol of
independence. So many sexual awakenings have happened in, or because of,
cars that many owners have developed intense emotional connections with
them.
But now, the wind is blowing in a different direction. Where kids of
Generation X dreamed of the day they'd get their first car, Millennials are
attaching the same feelings to their smartphones. They're connected with
their friends and love interests 24/7 - the car is no longer the gateway to
social interaction.
"When my son turned 16, he didn't care about getting his driver's license,"
says Washington. "What he cared about was upgrading his cellphone. That was
just unfathomable to me, but to him it was very natural and I think he
wasn't alone. The new generation is really thinking about how to use
transportation in an on-demand way, they are less tied emotionally to the
physical vehicle, and I think it's going to become very important for us to
be responsive to the future generations who are thinking about mobility
through that different lens."
That's just one of the challenging trends Ford and other auto manufacturers
are facing, and Washington identifies three other "megatrends" that are
influencing thinking at Ford.
"First, there's urbanization. Today there's almost 30 cities with more than
10 million people. In the next 10 to 15 years there's some studies that tell
us that's going to grow to more than 40. So this is a trend that's going to
be significant and it means that the infrastructure for transport is going
to be more and more crowded, it's going to be more and more difficult to get
around. This notion of global gridlock, which was theorized in the past, is
going to become more of a reality.
"The second is more people are entering what we would define as the middle
class, where you have enough disposable income to buy a car. From 2 billion
today, over the next 10 to 15 years we see than number doubling to 4 billion
people. You put that together with the first trend.
"Third trend that we're seeing is increasing concerns about the environment,
with air quality being near the top of that list. So it's going to become
increasingly important for us to deal with the realities of, not only
regulation driven requirements on the automotive sector, but the right thing
to do for the world, to make air quality good for our future generations."
So - choked city roads, increasing pressures to go easier on the
environment, and a new generation coming through that is far less likely to
aspire to car ownership in the same way their parents did - what's the path
forward for automakers?
Ford doesn't know what the future looks like, but it has some theories and
it's starting to test them in the real world. So here's a few things
Washington was prepared to speak about.

On self driving cars

While he was unwilling to put a time-frame on when Ford expects to go fully
driverless, Washington said, "autonomous vehicles are going to become a
reality in the future, we're pretty convinced of that. That puts more and
more requirement on the technology for autonomy to be very good and robust.
That's why we're taking our time to get that right. So imagine if you get
that right and you can take the driver out of the loop. Well that might
totally redefine what the interior of the vehicle might look like. Say you
have a city taxi service, if it's semi- or fully autonomous, you might
design that taxi vehicle to be very different looking to the cars that we
drive today. A lot of that will depend on the outcome of some of these
experiments that we're doing now."
On the legalities of driverless cars he said, "there are enough technical
challenges that that's where we're putting our energy right now. The
automotive industry has to come together as a community to work with the
policymakers and to address some of the legal issues. So technically, we
believe it's absolutely going to be possible for the ability to do full
autonomy in certain geofenced areas where the climate is good, you're not
obfuscated by snow and rain... that's going to be hard enough. The good news
is, we've got many of the building blocks available today. The new Mondeo
has many very capable semi-autonomous features on it. Lane keeping, blind
spot monitoring, parking assist, these are the building blocks for the
future fully autonomous vehicle."

On '"car on demand" subscription services

"That's exactly one of our experiments. And it's one that we're actually
having some good success with. We launched that experiment in the city of
London. With the density of the population there, it's very challenging to
own, park, drive and navigate. So we've launched one of our experiments
there we're calling Gold Drive. It's a vehicle on demand, we have both a
Focus BEV and a Focus Gas, a fleet of vehicles, and you can subscribe to the
vehicles using your smartphone. You access the vehicle, unlock it, get in
the car, start it, drive it for however many hours you wanna use it for,
drop it off... One of the early learnings we're getting from that experiment
is that people love the idea of using a car and then being able to deliver
it in a place where they have a guaranteed parking spot. Those are the kinds
of learnings that are telling us that if we do something like a car on
demand or a car sharing service, make sure you have a place to park it - and
also make it easy for people to access it!
"Another experiment we're doing is remote positioning of vehicles. Imagine a
future where you've got cars on demand that you order, that you wanna have
available the next morning. Well, one of the challenges is having the
vehicle in the right place at the right time. Imagine a future where you
could actually re-locate that vehicle autonomously but remotely, by remote
control. So we're doing an experiment [using go-karts] to enable the remote
repositioning of vehicles using on-board cameras and sensors so you can
relocate a vehicle from one place to another, safely, but with no on-vehicle
human involvement. We're working with Georgia Tech."

On smart parking

Many of Ford's new cars already have the ability to identify an open parking
spot as they drive past it. The next step, according to Washington, might be
to communicate with other cars on the road when a spot is available.
"It's not science fiction, because the sensors on the vehicle are actually
capable enough to tell when you've driven by a parking spot. The vision
recognition capabilities of these on-vehicle sensors are actually good
enough to tell you if that's a valid parking spot or not. If you overlay
that with very detailed maps of certain cities, you could actually imagine
how you could inform an information system that this is not only a free
parking spot, but a valid one. We're doing an experiment, I think it's in
Atlanta in the US, where we're using the onboard sensors of the vehicles to
do exactly that. It's a prototype and it's an experiment. We'll run that
experiment for this year, and based on what we learn we'll determine whether
it's something we wanna roll out as a service.
"We've been thinking about this a lot - the potential for bringing value to
our customers is enormous if we can do analytics around the data that's
available that comes from the vehicle, and process that in smart ways that
give value back to the customer. If a customer wants to have access to that
parking information, they might need to give us access to the sensors on
their vehicle to be a participant. That's one of the premises we're testing,
there are many other models we might use."

On tech giants Apple and Google getting into the automotive space

"It's actually pretty exciting to us that there's so much interest from the
tech sector in automobiles and the automotive sector. We think it's a case
of rising all boats, so we're pretty excited about that. It's validated the
need for us to be in Silicon Valley, and it's a pretty special place. You've
got a very high density of tech companies and venture capital investment
firms and universities and national laboratories doing very cutting edge
research and technology development. By being a part of that community you
have access to a very vibrant community of innovative thinkers and
technology innovators.
"It's very validating to us that technology behemoths like Apple and Google
<http://www.gizmag.com/google-self-driving-car-prototype/35339/>  are paying
attention to the automotive industry. With that said, it's also a bit of a
wake-up call. We don't have forever to figure out how to take our game to
the next level in terms of driving innovation in our business, getting value
out of doing connected car and doing something real with autonomous vehicle
technology.
"The good news for us is that we've been in Silicon Valley for a number of
years. We started our operation there three years ago. This year we opened a
much larger facility and announced our commitment to populate that facility
with more than 120 people by the end of this year. We're very excited about
that. We've got a very creative team there and they're part of a global PD
(product development) team.
"It's already giving some benefits to us by enabling to accelerate some of
our partnerships with the universities there, and with tech companies that
we're doing research with. One of our projects is with Nest
<http://www.gizmag.com/nest-developer-program-works-with-nest-home-automatio
n/32676/> , where we've developed a capability for the vehicle to
communicate to the Nest API so that when you approach your home, it'll send
a signal to your home to turn the temperature up, or to cool it down - sort
of a smart car/smart home concept. That wouldn't be possible if we hadn't
been there in Silicon Valley and forged that relationship with Nest.
"I'd say we're paying attention to the tech companies' interest in the
automotive sector, but I think threatened is too strong a word."

On Ford's data and analytics capabilities

We put it to Washington that Ford's existing fleet of vehicles could make
for a big advantage over Google's small fleet of autonomous test vehicles
and that every sensor on every Ford on the road could be relaying back a
massive amount of data to help jump-start Ford's own autonomous car plans.
"A big part of the big data experiment is to assess the validity of doing
something like that. So far the signals are coming back that it's possible,
it's very feasible. We are getting more serious about data and analytics.
We're just now in the process of assembling our global data and analytics
team under the leadership of a new senior leader that we hired earlier this
year. We hired our first chief data and analytics officer, and he's
assembling this team and their primary responsibility is going to be to
develop the architecture for us to harvest and get value out of this massive
sensor set of vehicles that are collecting data - and to do it in the right
way, with the right privacy principles and the right cybersecurity protocols
and the right framework for keeping the data organized and sorted so you can
do analytics on it that can then inform how you can actually make the
service and the experience better. That's certainly squarely in our plans."

On whether the days of the car enthusiast are coming to an end

"I think you're going to have both models. There are going to be people who
continue to have a great relationship with their vehicle. I'll never stop
having that kind of feeling toward my vehicle. I love to drive and I think
I'm not alone. I think that holds for future generations as well. But in
some circumstances it may be too difficult to be mobile in a megacity in an
efficient way, and we want to be able to enable our customers to have good
options when it's too difficult - and when it may not be the best thing for
the environment for everybody to try to fit a vehicle on the road all the
time where the infrastructure just doesn't support it
 
 
 
 
 
 
Larry - Cleveland
-------------- next part --------------
   Ken Washington, Ford's new VP of research and advanced engineering


   Global trends appear to be moving towards a future where in many
   markets, car ownership may look like an expensive, impractical and
   inconvenient way to get around. So what's the next model of personal
   transport, and where do the big automakers fit in? Ford's new global VP
   of Research and Advanced Engineering, Ken Washington, sat down in
   Melbourne for a "crystal ball" discussion about autonomous cars,
   on-demand vehicles, car sharing, smart parking, multi-mode transport,
   and how a car company might learn to cater to a new generation of
   customers that are far more interested in upgrading their phones than
   getting their driver's licenses.

   Over the last 100 years, auto manufacturers have created a fairly
   stable relationship with their customers. People buy cars more or less
   as soon as they can afford them, and enjoy a freedom of mobility that
   was unavailable to them beforehand. Cars transform our lives and
   they're a symbol of independence. So many sexual awakenings have
   happened in, or because of, cars that many owners have developed
   intense emotional connections with them.

   But now, the wind is blowing in a different direction. Where kids of
   Generation X dreamed of the day they'd get their first car, Millennials
   are attaching the same feelings to their smartphones. They're connected
   with their friends and love interests 24/7 - the car is no longer the
   gateway to social interaction.

   "When my son turned 16, he didn't care about getting his driver's
   license," says Washington. "What he cared about was upgrading his
   cellphone. That was just unfathomable to me, but to him it was very
   natural and I think he wasn't alone. The new generation is really
   thinking about how to use transportation in an on-demand way, they are
   less tied emotionally to the physical vehicle, and I think it's going
   to become very important for us to be responsive to the future
   generations who are thinking about mobility through that different
   lens."

   That's just one of the challenging trends Ford and other auto
   manufacturers are facing, and Washington identifies three other
   "megatrends" that are influencing thinking at Ford.

   "First, there's urbanization. Today there's almost 30 cities with more
   than 10 million people. In the next 10 to 15 years there's some studies
   that tell us that's going to grow to more than 40. So this is a trend
   that's going to be significant and it means that the infrastructure for
   transport is going to be more and more crowded, it's going to be more
   and more difficult to get around. This notion of global gridlock, which
   was theorized in the past, is going to become more of a reality.

   "The second is more people are entering what we would define as the
   middle class, where you have enough disposable income to buy a car.
   From 2 billion today, over the next 10 to 15 years we see than number
   doubling to 4 billion people. You put that together with the first
   trend.

   "Third trend that we're seeing is increasing concerns about the
   environment, with air quality being near the top of that list. So it's
   going to become increasingly important for us to deal with the
   realities of, not only regulation driven requirements on the automotive
   sector, but the right thing to do for the world, to make air quality
   good for our future generations."

   So - choked city roads, increasing pressures to go easier on the
   environment, and a new generation coming through that is far less
   likely to aspire to car ownership in the same way their parents did -
   what's the path forward for automakers?

   Ford doesn't know what the future looks like, but it has some theories
   and it's starting to test them in the real world. So here's a few
   things Washington was prepared to speak about.

On self driving cars

   While he was unwilling to put a time-frame on when Ford expects to go
   fully driverless, Washington said, "autonomous vehicles are going to
   become a reality in the future, we're pretty convinced of that. That
   puts more and more requirement on the technology for autonomy to be
   very good and robust. That's why we're taking our time to get that
   right. So imagine if you get that right and you can take the driver out
   of the loop. Well that might totally redefine what the interior of the
   vehicle might look like. Say you have a city taxi service, if it's
   semi- or fully autonomous, you might design that taxi vehicle to be
   very different looking to the cars that we drive today. A lot of that
   will depend on the outcome of some of these experiments that we're
   doing now."

   On the legalities of driverless cars he said, "there are enough
   technical challenges that that's where we're putting our energy right
   now. The automotive industry has to come together as a community to
   work with the policymakers and to address some of the legal issues. So
   technically, we believe it's absolutely going to be possible for the
   ability to do full autonomy in certain geofenced areas where the
   climate is good, you're not obfuscated by snow and rain... that's going
   to be hard enough. The good news is, we've got many of the building
   blocks available today. The new Mondeo has many very capable
   semi-autonomous features on it. Lane keeping, blind spot monitoring,
   parking assist, these are the building blocks for the future fully
   autonomous vehicle."

On '"car on demand" subscription services

   "That's exactly one of our experiments. And it's one that we're
   actually having some good success with. We launched that experiment in
   the city of London. With the density of the population there, it's very
   challenging to own, park, drive and navigate. So we've launched one of
   our experiments there we're calling Gold Drive. It's a vehicle on
   demand, we have both a Focus BEV and a Focus Gas, a fleet of vehicles,
   and you can subscribe to the vehicles using your smartphone. You access
   the vehicle, unlock it, get in the car, start it, drive it for however
   many hours you wanna use it for, drop it off... One of the early
   learnings we're getting from that experiment is that people love the
   idea of using a car and then being able to deliver it in a place where
   they have a guaranteed parking spot. Those are the kinds of learnings
   that are telling us that if we do something like a car on demand or a
   car sharing service, make sure you have a place to park it - and also
   make it easy for people to access it!

   "Another experiment we're doing is remote positioning of vehicles.
   Imagine a future where you've got cars on demand that you order, that
   you wanna have available the next morning. Well, one of the challenges
   is having the vehicle in the right place at the right time. Imagine a
   future where you could actually re-locate that vehicle autonomously but
   remotely, by remote control. So we're doing an experiment [using
   go-karts] to enable the remote repositioning of vehicles using on-board
   cameras and sensors so you can relocate a vehicle from one place to
   another, safely, but with no on-vehicle human involvement. We're
   working with Georgia Tech."

On smart parking

   Many of Ford's new cars already have the ability to identify an open
   parking spot as they drive past it. The next step, according to
   Washington, might be to communicate with other cars on the road when a
   spot is available.

   "It's not science fiction, because the sensors on the vehicle are
   actually capable enough to tell when you've driven by a parking spot.
   The vision recognition capabilities of these on-vehicle sensors are
   actually good enough to tell you if that's a valid parking spot or not.
   If you overlay that with very detailed maps of certain cities, you
   could actually imagine how you could inform an information system that
   this is not only a free parking spot, but a valid one. We're doing an
   experiment, I think it's in Atlanta in the US, where we're using the
   onboard sensors of the vehicles to do exactly that. It's a prototype
   and it's an experiment. We'll run that experiment for this year, and
   based on what we learn we'll determine whether it's something we wanna
   roll out as a service.

   "We've been thinking about this a lot - the potential for bringing
   value to our customers is enormous if we can do analytics around the
   data that's available that comes from the vehicle, and process that in
   smart ways that give value back to the customer. If a customer wants to
   have access to that parking information, they might need to give us
   access to the sensors on their vehicle to be a participant. That's one
   of the premises we're testing, there are many other models we might
   use."

On tech giants Apple and Google getting into the automotive space

   "It's actually pretty exciting to us that there's so much interest from
   the tech sector in automobiles and the automotive sector. We think it's
   a case of rising all boats, so we're pretty excited about that. It's
   validated the need for us to be in Silicon Valley, and it's a pretty
   special place. You've got a very high density of tech companies and
   venture capital investment firms and universities and national
   laboratories doing very cutting edge research and technology
   development. By being a part of that community you have access to a
   very vibrant community of innovative thinkers and technology
   innovators.

   "It's very validating to us that technology behemoths like Apple and
   [1]Google are paying attention to the automotive industry. With that
   said, it's also a bit of a wake-up call. We don't have forever to
   figure out how to take our game to the next level in terms of driving
   innovation in our business, getting value out of doing connected car
   and doing something real with autonomous vehicle technology.

   "The good news for us is that we've been in Silicon Valley for a number
   of years. We started our operation there three years ago. This year we
   opened a much larger facility and announced our commitment to populate
   that facility with more than 120 people by the end of this year. We're
   very excited about that. We've got a very creative team there and
   they're part of a global PD (product development) team.

   "It's already giving some benefits to us by enabling to accelerate some
   of our partnerships with the universities there, and with tech
   companies that we're doing research with. One of our projects is with
   [2]Nest, where we've developed a capability for the vehicle to
   communicate to the Nest API so that when you approach your home, it'll
   send a signal to your home to turn the temperature up, or to cool it
   down - sort of a smart car/smart home concept. That wouldn't be
   possible if we hadn't been there in Silicon Valley and forged that
   relationship with Nest.

   "I'd say we're paying attention to the tech companies' interest in the
   automotive sector, but I think threatened is too strong a word."

On Ford's data and analytics capabilities

   We put it to Washington that Ford's existing fleet of vehicles could
   make for a big advantage over Google's small fleet of autonomous test
   vehicles and that every sensor on every Ford on the road could be
   relaying back a massive amount of data to help jump-start Ford's own
   autonomous car plans.

   "A big part of the big data experiment is to assess the validity of
   doing something like that. So far the signals are coming back that it's
   possible, it's very feasible. We are getting more serious about data
   and analytics. We're just now in the process of assembling our global
   data and analytics team under the leadership of a new senior leader
   that we hired earlier this year. We hired our first chief data and
   analytics officer, and he's assembling this team and their primary
   responsibility is going to be to develop the architecture for us to
   harvest and get value out of this massive sensor set of vehicles that
   are collecting data - and to do it in the right way, with the right
   privacy principles and the right cybersecurity protocols and the right
   framework for keeping the data organized and sorted so you can do
   analytics on it that can then inform how you can actually make the
   service and the experience better. That's certainly squarely in our
   plans."

On whether the days of the car enthusiast are coming to an end

   "I think you're going to have both models. There are going to be people
   who continue to have a great relationship with their vehicle. I'll
   never stop having that kind of feeling toward my vehicle. I love to
   drive and I think I'm not alone. I think that holds for future
   generations as well. But in some circumstances it may be too difficult
   to be mobile in a megacity in an efficient way, and we want to be able
   to enable our customers to have good options when it's too difficult -
   and when it may not be the best thing for the environment for everybody
   to try to fit a vehicle on the road all the time where the
   infrastructure just doesn't support it







   Larry - Cleveland

References

   1. http://www.gizmag.com/google-self-driving-car-prototype/35339/
   2. http://www.gizmag.com/nest-developer-program-works-with-nest-home-automation/32676/