NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Auto tech platform wars: Ford battles to move ahead of the competition | #FordInnovation
The people at Ford Motor Co. are making moves to become a technologically advanced car company. The Ford Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto opened a year ago to further the company’s branching into connectivity, mobility and autonomous vehicles. Hosts John Furrier and Jeff Frick of
John Furrier and Jeff Frick, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, recapped their conversations with Marcy Klevorn and Ken Washington of Ford about the company’s technological ambitions.
According to Furrier, the company’s biggest challenge is to shift from an old line manufacturing business to a consumer-driven technology company. The transformation to a company offering not just conventional vehicles, but proprietary technology is possible, but Furrier said, “To compete with Tesla and Uber, they have to up their game big time.”
Ford needs to move quickly with Multimodal
Ford plans to incorporate multimodal technologies — a move Furrier sees as smart, as long as Ford can deploy the technology fast enough. Jeff Frick agreed that multimodal is crucial for tech-driven companies now, and he said that in some ways “mobile is no longer the side dish now; it’s the entree.”
Ford is engaged very busily in its Silicon Valley project. The opening of its Research and Innovation Center last year marked a serious effort on the company’s part to pull ahead in the automotive tech world.
Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Ford Innovation Day 2016.
Photo by SiliconANGLE
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
