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Ford: Global Gridlock Driving Adoption of Intelligent Transportation Systems

The auto industry must address global gridlock, especially in developing nations lacking sufficient roads, Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford said Monday at the 2014 ITS World Congress in Detroit.

bill ford
(MCT) Sept. 09--The auto industry must address global gridlock, especially in developing nations lacking sufficient roads, Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford said Monday at the 2014 ITS World Congress in Detroit.

As rising incomes in China and India pave most of the industry's growth, emerging markets' largest cities can't build roads fast enough, said Ford, one of the speakers at the five-day conference devoted to intelligent transportation technology.

"If we sell millions of vehicles, where do we put them and where do we drive them and how do they interact?" he asked. "You cannot shove two vehicles in every garage in Mumbai. Any business only exists to make peoples' lives better. At a certain point, shoving more vehicles into urban environments doesn't do that."

Car-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, and better public transportation and bicycle-friendly cities can help, said Ford, who has cultivated a reputation for environmental stewardship that might appear unusual for an auto executive.

He insisted that exploring alternatives to single-occupant automobiles is not against the industry's interests. Recalling his company's introduction of an annual sustainability report about five years ago, Ford said, "The environmentalists said I was a wolf in sheep's clothing and the people in Detroit thought I was crazy."

Ford called on the auto industry, academia and government to work together to tackle mobility problems.

"People in daily commutes love their cars and hate everyone else's," but he warned that gridlock will only get worse because the money is not there to fix the infrastructure.

A clearer national energy policy is needed as automakers expand their offerings of hybrids, all-electric vehicles and eventually cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

"We're spending billions on electrification. So we need to build out the grid in a thoughtful way. If we electrify our whole fleet it's going to put extra burden on the grid," he said. "My fear is that we electrify the fleet and the impact environmentally is not what it could be."

Then there's the challenge of creating a viable distribution network for hydrogen. Toyota last month launched a test fleet of fuel-cell cars in San Francisco, and plans to sell it in Japan and California next month.

Again, Ford warned of unforeseen costs as the industry diversifies its fuel sources.

"We can withstand one tear-up of our infrastructure; we can't tear it up multiple times to hop from one fuel to another," Ford said. "We need to decide where we're going to go and get on with it."

Meanwhile, Ford said the automaker is conducting mobility experiments around the world, including autonomous driving. He declined to be more specific about projects that have not yet been announced.

Last week, Toyota said it would introduce high-tech crash-avoidance systems on all its models in 2017. Sunday, General Motors said it would offer a wireless crash-avoidance package in the 2017 Cadillac CTS and a more advanced self-steering cruise-control system in another unspecified 2017 model.

Most automakers offer at least one model that can already automatically brake, accelerate and park itself. But these features are not yet standard equipment in all new models and not all the pieces of autonomous driving are ready.

"All vehicles have to be on a single network all talking to each other," Ford said. "It doesn't do any good if Fords only talk to Fords."

He imagines a world where a cell phone alerts a driver about an hour delay because of an accident. That opens the option of driving to a train station where she can find a parking spot, purchase a ticket online and hop on the commuter train. Once in the city, she can call a shared-car service and go to lunch.

Ford said he recognizes some of this technology "kind of freaks some people out." Some customers don't want their car talking to other cars. They just want the radio to work.

But the transition to connected highways has already begun.

"By the time we get to that final step of full autonomy, it won't feel like such a big step because so many of the features will already be coming in," Ford said.

Contact Alisa Priddle: 313-222-5394 or apriddle@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @AlisaPriddle

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