Bill Ford, the great grandson of magnate Henry Ford, has stepped forward with a thought that resonates with many people – that carmakers will need to work with tech companies such as Apple in the future, in order to survive or be relevant in the industry. The executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company claimed that he intends to turn the carmaker into something more, and has targeted it to be a mobility services company.
Mr. Ford shared, “You have autonomous driving, connected cars, new ways of accessing ownership like Zipcar, Uber or Lyft, you have data collection. We are looking at all of it. It’s the company that can stitch all that together to make people’s lives easier [that] will emerge as a winner. It will require partnerships with big technology companies and also with startups.”
As to whether Ford could work alongside Apple and Google in order to churn out driverless technology, Mr Ford has this to say: “You never know. I do think partnerships will be important. In my great grandfather’s time, when he founded Ford, there was a single vertical, where they did everything. But one company shouldn’t know it all or do it all. That’s going to change.” With the likes of Uber and Lyft being around these days, it is certainly worth checking out the crystal ball as to where the future of the automobile industry lies.
Filed in . Read more about Apple and Ford. Source: telegraph