Ford CEO Vows More Details This Year on Smart Mobility as ‘Strategy Progresses’

The rationale last month for creating Ford Smart Mobility as a new subsidiary "to design, build, grow and invest in emerging mobility services" (see report in the March 14 issue) was to allow the new unit “to have the organization and the structure to face off with some of the tech and mobility companies in terms of acting really fast,” yet still be “connected” to Ford’s “core operations,” CEO Mark Fields said. But “it's still way too early” to discuss Ford Smart Mobility’s work in much detail, Fields said in Q&A on an earnings call. With the new subsidiary, Ford will be “very focused” in the future “on where to play and how to win” in the mobility space, he said Thursday. “We are generally using experiments and pilots to, not only test technology and customer preferences, but very importantly test the business models, because at the end of the day, you want to make money on these things. And we're doing that before we make what I would call major bets on investments, whether it's internally or externally.” Fields promised the company will have “more to say about this as our Ford Smart Mobility strategy progresses this year.” Fields thinks global automakers will reach “an inflection point as an industry over the next number of years, given the technology that's available, not only in the product itself, but how to serve the customer,” he said. But “there's a lot of cars here in the U.S.,” and “it's going to take a long time, even with breakthrough technologies, where people will change that over,” and adopt autonomous, semi-autonomous or connected cars, he said. “Just the math will show you that will take a good amount of time.” Fields thinks “it's too early to tell” what technological trends will take over, “but we're really looking at this as vehicle miles traveled,” he said. Future autonomous vehicles “will be used 24/7, they'll rack up miles sooner,” which in turn will drive “more service revenue and, ultimately, more car sales,” he said. “Our strategy, very clearly, is to continue to make the investments on the technology side and the investments on the mobility side so that we can participate in both of those revenue streams.”