Mobility for a Better World

More sustainable cities with smarter forms of mobility are at the heart of Ford’s vision. Beyond these urban environments we see many other challenges, especially in underserved areas of mobility, where we can put our technology and know-how to work for a better world.

Answering the Needs of Cities and Citizens

Today at Ford, we’re focused on finding ways to make people’s lives better, whether they own a car or not. Consider some of the mobility challenges we’re working on:

Every year in the U.S., drivers spend roughly 160 million hours in their vehicles. That’s a lot of miles and a lot of time – and some estimates predict that total miles driven will go up by as much as 25 percent by 2040.

How does that impact people and communities? Let’s take Los Angeles as an example:

Commuters in Los Angeles can easily spend more than an hour each way getting to work. Over a lifetime, that’s nearly 25 percent of someone’s free time
L.A. congestion accounts for one-fifth of the congestion in the U.S. and costs the city $23 billion every year

At Ford, we’ve seen how exciting and liberating it is to imagine a different future, in the City of Tomorrow.

Ford’s City of Tomorrow

Liberating the Human Journey

To help shape a new future that answers the needs of cities and citizens, we’ve already started challenging the status quo by exploring new scenarios and what-ifs for transportation of the future.

What if we focused on optimizing roads for the total number of people on them instead of the total number of vehicles?

What if we could transform a commute from something painful into an opportunity to take a class, watch a movie or play a game?

And what would a city look like if more people were using shared services versus personally owned vehicles?

Ford Smart Mobility

As part of our Ford Smart Mobility plan, we have created the Ford City Solutions team to work with cities around the world, starting with San Francisco and growing from there.

What We’re Doing

Working on San Francisco’s Transportation Needs

We’re working with city authorities and partners to find innovative solutions to San Francisco’s mobility challenges.

Chariot Shuttle Service

We have acquired Chariot, a San Francisco-based crowdsourced shuttle service. Currently operating throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Chariot is growing its operations to eight cities this year, including at least one city outside of the U.S. Today, Chariot’s routes are crowdsourced based on rider demand. In the future, they will operate dynamically – using data algorithms to map efficient routes to best serve the real-time mobility needs of communities.

The Chariot shuttles complement mass transit by filling the gap between taxi and bus services – providing an on-demand, point-to-point transportation option that is convenient, efficient and cost-effective. For every one dynamic shuttle that is placed into service during peak travel times, urban congestion could be reduced by up to 25 fewer vehicles, according to a private study for Ford conducted by KPMG.

Bikes for the Last Mile

Bikes are another important option for commuters in the city’s Bay Area and play an increasing role in urban mobility. Ford and Motivate, the global leader in bike share, are working with San Francisco city officials to add new stations and increase the number of bikes to 7,000 in the Bay Area by the end of 2018.

Mobility and Human Progress

See our Ford Project Better World initiatives in rural areas of South Africa and Nigeria.

For us at Ford, mobility is about human progress. Not only making people’s lives better in mature economies and major cities, but helping solve problems in areas of the world that tend to be underserved by technology advances.

In India, we are working with World Vision, the international children’s charity, to help connect remote and impoverished communities with health care and education services. We have provided World Vision with two specially equipped Ford Endeavour SUVs – a Mobile Health vehicle and a Mobile Library – which also have Ford’s OpenXC platform to help the organization provide its services reliably and efficiently.

In rural areas of Africa, expanding and improving mobility represents an incredible opportunity to help transform the continent, through connecting remote communities and linking them up with vital services they need.