The Ford Motor Company was in the news today for sharing cars, patents and leadership in the automotive industry. At the Mackinac Policy Conference, Ford Chairman Bill Ford discussed how Ford is changing mobility with the times.
Ford noted that automakers that figure auto sales and car sharing are more likely to succeed than those that ignore the trend at their own peril
“If we all collectively did nothing and we stayed with the current business model, we could just end up being assemblers of other people’s stuff with a very low-margin, high fixed-cost business,” said Ford who noted that Ford is testing a car-sharing service in London.
Ford said in company statement, earlier this month, that ride-sharing companies such as Lyft are the future of mobility. In fact, Fontinalis Partners, a venture capital firm co-founded by Bill Ford, invested in Lyft.
Like his great-grandfather, Henry Ford, Bill sees Ford Motor Company as creating mobility for all as connected cars, self-driving cars, ride services and fractional ownership change the future of mobility.
Ford will be hiring 200 more electric car engineers this year.
The Ford Motor Company is offering competitors access to its electric vehicle technology patents to help accelerate industry-wide research and development of electric vehicles. Ford has more than 650 electric car patents and approximately 1,000 pending patent applications on electrified vehicle technologies.
Ford currently makes six hybrid and electric cars.Patents that the company is sharing include battery charge balancing, maximized rengenerative braking, and driving behavior feedback.