Time to read: 6 min<\/p>\n
The development of autonomous vehicle technologies, coupled with a growing demand for personal transport options and decreasing interest in vehicle ownership, is radically impacting the automotive industry. Forward-thinking OEMs* like Ford are responding with a bold new strategy: redefining themselves as service-oriented mobility companies.<\/p>\n
We talk to Adi Singh, Research Scientist at Ford\u2019s Silicon Valley-based Research and Innovation Center, to discuss how the Silicon Valley ecosystem is impacting Ford\u2019s development processes, the challenges of shifting the mindset of a hundred-year-old legacy, and Ford\u2019s transition to the mobility company of the future.<\/p>\n
Innovation has never come easy. Homo sapiens<\/em> is infamous for being an animal of habit\u2014just a few centuries ago people were burned at the stake for suggesting the Earth isn\u2019t flat or the center of the universe. We\u2019re thankfully past that today, but our inborn resistance to change persists. And it takes, as always, visionary minds to push the rest of us out of our comfort zone.<\/p>\n \u201cA mindset is [very] hard to change,\u201d shares Adi. \u201cEspecially when you\u2019re talking about people who have been with the company two, three decades. It\u2019s been an uphill battle for us to influence the established mindset. It\u2019s almost as difficult as starting something new\u2014if not harder. You\u2019re not only trying to prove the value of this incredible new work you\u2019re doing, you also need to build a bridge between the mindset of innovation and the mindset of the set-in-stone here in the Midwest.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps ironically, it\u2019s not just Ford\u2019s own people the company needs to bring onboard its new ship of change.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we do recruitment events,\u201d explains Adi, \u201cwe get a lot of aeronautics people even though we\u2019re recruiting for software. It\u2019s a self-selective crowd because of the brand and legacy everyone associates with us. No one expects us to be doing software engineering, despite the fact that cars are the ultimate systems integrator. There\u2019s a hundred million lines of code in a Mustang. A Boeing 747 has only about eight million.\u201d<\/p>\n That seems frightfully counterintuitive, but Adi explains it\u2019s only because cars are driven by regular people, whereas planes are operated by trained pilots.<\/p>\n And yet, Ford\u2019s workforce does recognize the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley. \u201cIt\u2019s undisputed throughout the company that there\u2019s a lot of innovation in [the Valley] and that if you\u2019re not harnessing it, you\u2019re missing out big time,\u201d says Adi.<\/p>\n The company is acutely aware it needs to capitalize on that recognition, ASAP. One of the ways it\u2019s doing so is through investment. The company is investing heavily in establishing a presence in Silicon Valley to accelerate the speed of development in the autonomous vehicle race\u2014as are other OEMs like BMW, Honda, and General Motors.<\/p>\n \u201cYou always want to move as fast as possible,\u201d says Adi. \u201cSo when we see another company working in an area we\u2019re interested in, that automatically increases our own speed. Everyone feels the need to hustle.\u201d<\/p>\n And Ford knows if it waits for its entire population to shift their mindset, it\u2019ll be too late.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve made several major investments here in the Valley,\u201d Adi tells us. With Baidu as a co-investor, Ford pumped $150 million this spring into Velodyne, one of the world\u2019s top makers of lidar sensors (Lidar uses lasers instead of radio waves to detect objects). In July, Ford invested in Civil Maps, a Stanford StartX project, with five other investors in a round led by Yahoo! Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang. And of course there\u2019s its new commuter shuttle service, Chariot, the first acquisition of its freshly formed subsidiary Ford Smart Mobility (more on this later). Ford is also sponsoring Bay Area Bikeshare.<\/p>\n New visions and new strategies require not just new mindsets but entire new approaches, to everything from design to engineering to marketing.<\/p>\n But first, let\u2019s define this whole \u201cmobility\u201d thing. Already on the verge of becoming one of those overused but under-valued buzzwords, mobility<\/em> refers to, in Adi\u2019s words, \u201canything involved in moving people and things from point A to point B.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cFord has always been a mobility company, although primarily for the single occupant,\u201d he says. \u201cBut now that the landscape is changing, we\u2019re taking a step back to see how we can influence other forms of mobility, our new shuttle for example. We\u2019re also looking into bikes, shared parking, even shared driving.\u201d<\/p>\n Shared vehicles, of course, go against the very grain of the traditional automotive business model, which calls for every American to have at least a few cars in their garage. But, as we\u2019ve said, the world is changing, and our beloved car companies are changing along with it.<\/p>\n When you design a single-occupancy vehicle, your entire focus is on that single occupant operating that vehicle, explains Adi. But when you\u2019re designing a vehicle for multiple drivers and riders, your focus opens up significantly. \u201cYou need to understand the dynamics of public transportation. How it fits with the infrastructure of a city. Its culture. Its economy. All of these factors affect the design of the product.\u201d<\/p>\n First, Ford evolved its entire design process and thinking. The latest commuter shuttle design, shares Adi, is \u201cthe result of a two-year study we did with IDEO. We made cardboard prototypes. We made models of different seat layouts, using a simple wooden board placed at different heights to test optimal heights. Other wooden boards tested different door operations. We can easily fill a shuttle with 14 seats, but the question we asked was, what\u2019s the user experience in those 14 seats? People want more legroom and they want USB access. And we\u2019re gathering [user] feedback through our mobile app. This is the type of design thinking that\u2019s permeating our mobility business now.\u201d<\/p>\n Secondly, from a process\/logistics standpoint, Ford\u2019s customers have always been the dealers, not the end-users. Following in Tesla\u2019s footsteps, Ford now needs to learn how to interface directly with the people driving\u2014or riding in\u2014its vehicles.<\/p>\n Third is that tricky issue of autonomy. As in, a vehicle that drives itself, and takes the driver out of the equation. Adi asks the rhetorical question countless other automotive executives and engineers are also posing: \u201cHow do you get people comfortable with the idea of autonomy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese are all the things we\u2019re debating now. Getting the technology ready is just one part of the solution. The biggest part is user acceptance.\u201d<\/p>\n When innovating, it\u2019s always a good idea to set up a brand new entity. In March of this year Ford announced the formation of Ford Smart Mobility (FSM), a new subsidiary whose goal is to \u201cdesign, build, grow and invest in emerging mobility services.\u201d<\/p>\n Adi says that \u201cwe did that because we recognized our [legacy] processes were streamlined for designing and producing cars, not for being a user- and design-focused tech firm. The main difference between \u2018big Ford\u2019 and FSM is that FSM has a nearly flat hierarchy. That does away with all that red tape that\u2019s still useful today in car manufacturing, but not for [the autonomous vehicle] industry. For example, big Ford requires multiple reviews before any new thing, any part or process, can be approved. When you have hundreds of projects, that kind of review process becomes overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n FSM, in other words, is revving up its development speed by slashing bureaucracy. Not a bad thing, certainly.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a services-oriented design process,\u201d Adi adds, \u201cthe sign-offs are more localized. There is a lot of freedom and flexibility in terms of the avenues we\u2019re allowed to explore. So if we have five talented people working on a problem, they should have the freedom to just do it instead of having to work through a bottleneck.\u201d<\/p>\n All of the effort, energy and resources that Ford and other automotive manufacturers are pouring into this new world of mobility are substantial and worthy of following closely. But two large questions remain: user acceptance and a sustainable business model. With something as personal, ubiquitous, and safety-related as automotive transport, many pegs will need to fall into all the right places before we can say that this industry has been truly transformed.<\/p>\n *OEM = original equipment manufacturer<\/em><\/p>\n – – –<\/p>\nInvesting in Silicon Valley<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Mobility Re-defined<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A New Focus on User Experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The Case for Flat Hierarchy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Will It All Pay Off?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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