All Ford Cars Sold in US Will Have Embedded Modems by Year-End, Says CEO 

Ford will factory-install modems in all new vehicles it sells in the U.S. by year-end, and in 90 percent of the cars it sells globally by 2020, said CEO Jim Hackett on a Q1 call Thursday. It’s in keeping with the “Smart Vehicles for a Smart World” theme of his CES 2018 keynote, in which he said “cities are going to be communicating back to the vehicles and vice versa,” he said. “We have the opportunity to help create a better transportation system that will improve lives.” Ford plans to “leverage this connectivity to continuously improve our vehicles and services and create better experiences for our customers,” he said. “We know this will build loyalty and deliver recurring revenue streams.” Ford has picked a third U.S. city for test-deploying autonomous vehicles (AVs) to follow Miami and Washington and expects to announce the location later in 2019, said Hackett. “We're testing in some really challenging areas,” he said when asked to explain why Ford is expanding AVs to more cities when other automakers are cutting back. “I don't want to pick on any competitor because it's not my purpose, but you could put these vehicles in places where the weather never changes,” he said. “We’ve opted into some really difficult settings” to prove AVs’ “capability,” he said. If AVs were “only destined for the L.A. freeways, you don't have to deal with dogs and baseballs running across them,” he said. General Motors also is testing AVs in big cities (see 1904260002).