Strategy and Governance

Mobility Pilots in Brazil

São Bernardo Car-Sharing Project

The WiiMove mobility app – encouraging ride sharing among Ford employees.

A car-sharing pilot for around 4,000 employees at our São Bernardo assembly plant has proved to be a useful and popular service – and provided valuable insights for future mobility solutions in South America and across the globe.

The six-month trial offered three Ford Focus vehicles from our internal fleet for rental during weekends and holidays. There was a fast take-up (via mobile web page) and 100 percent of the slots available for the whole duration were booked within the first three weeks.

Analysis of the data revealed that all the employees who rented a vehicle in the pilot already had a car at home and needed another vehicle on specific occasions that don’t justify buying a second car. This provides further evidence that demand exists among consumers for good value, high-quality, convenient car-sharing services.

WiiMove Mobility App: Making Ride Sharing Easier

In partnership with WiiMove – a Brazilian mobility app – we launched our second mobility experiment in Brazil. This focuses on developing a ride-sharing community, open to all Ford employees in our plants. The app helps drivers and riders to link up to share a trip, which provides an additional option for a multimodal daily commute. For the São Paulo area, the app provides information on different modes of transportation – public and private – to help users create seamless journeys. The idea comes out of our ongoing engagement with tech startups and entrepreneurs, who are vital to helping us develop new transportation models and ecosystems.

Collaborating Externally on Future Mobility Solutions

From encouraging tech solutions to furthering the mobility debate, we have continued to engage at all levels through a range of forums:

Ford Brazil took part in a major mobility event in São Paulo – the 2017 Mobility Week – and was the only auto company to do so. Ford’s space was designed to engage people, and included “Cinema 360” to show our global mobility initiatives. Members of the public were also able to take part in a fun Multimodal Challenge game in which they had to choose an optimum mix of transport modes to complete a journey – from vehicles and rollerblades to buses and bikes.
Campus Party is one of the world’s largest global tech events. Under its auspices we invited developers to take part in a hackathon in the Campus Party Technology Fair in the northeast of Brazil. Ideas included tech to inform drivers of locations with a high incidence of robberies and a parental control that lets parents check that their kids are driving the family car safely. In the São Paulo edition of Campus Party, Ford’s experts conducted workshops to promote the open source technology used in the SYNC connectivity platform of Ford’s vehicles.
We also invited developers to take part in a “Hack nSync” at Campus Party Argentina, setting them the challenge to create innovative ideas for mobile apps and connected car technologies. Ford Argentina was the only auto company at Campus Party Argentina, which was held for the first time in the country in 2017.