Behind me lays the town of Silicon Valley, right in the middle of the state California, USA.
As a car enthusiast, I've got mixed feelings about this place.
Because if there's one place in the world, where you can still enjoy having 6- and 8-cylinder engines in the front of your car,
it's the States. That wouldn't be the case if it was up to the companies in the valley,
because they're really trying to change the future of cars. And that makes me curious as a journalist,
because there are a lot of stories to be told here.
That's why we're diving into Silicon Valley; What is the future of the car?
In this video, we're returning to Palo Alto,
where we'll visit the Ford Motor Company. For a long time,
the company didn't really seem to care about autonomous driving, or new mobility.
However, Ford is investing over a billion dollars in Ford Smart Mobility.
CEO Raj Rao explains to us what his department is going to do in the coming years.
Remarkably, Ford isn't going solo on this one. Instead they're reaching out to different parties.
Sparring with city councils and other governmental branches, is an important step according to Ford.
So, Ford is thinking of a future as a mobility provider, taking public transport with them in their plans.
A bold call from a company that is surviving, because thousands of people own Ford cars.
The company has to become more flexible on that area, according to the CEO.
We still think Ford has put more effort in new mobility lately.
It took over Argo AI, a specialist company on the area of artificial intelligence,
it invested in LiDAR-expert Velodyne, and it incorporated the ride-platform Chariot.
With those efforts, Ford wants to become market leader in new mobility by 2021.
Brands like General Motors and Mercedes-Benz...
...have already been experimenting with projects like these for years.
It almost feels like Ford has woken up, and is now ambitiously trying to catch up.
So there's a lot on the agenda for Ford. According to Raj Rao,
the words won't go without acts. Ford have set some quite ambitious goals for themselves.