With a new Silicon Valley research center, Ford commits to connected cars

Ford opened a new Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto, Calif., on Thursday, in order to collaborate with other Silicon Valley tech companies. The next generation of autos will be interconnected and partially (or fully) autonomous.

|
Richard Drew/AP/File
Ford opened a new research center in Silicon Valley on Thursday. Here, a 2015 Ford Mustang is displayed at the 2014 New York International Auto Show.

Ford opened a new Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto, Calif., on Thursday, with an aim to more fully participate in Silicon Valley’s “marketplace of ideas.”

The company predicts that the next generation of cars will be interconnected (and at least partially autonomous), and wants to be at the forefront of the research that will bring these vehicles to market.

Most major automakers have similar innovation centers in Silicon Valley, but by the end of the year, Ford’s will be one of the largest.

The company plans to employ 125 people researching how Ford vehicles can wirelessly communicate with other devices. This kind of interconnection, known often as the “Internet of Things,” was the big focus of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and automakers are working to allow their cars to seamlessly communicate with each other and with the devices drivers use, including smart phones.

The staff at Ford’s Silicon Valley facility will concentrate on how advances in user interfaces and data collection can be used to improve automotive technology.

"Innovation for us is very meaningful because it's in our DNA, in the legacy of Henry Ford,” Ford chief executive officer Mark Fields said at the center’s opening ceremony. “Innovation is why a lot of us joined the company in the first place. We want to be viewed as part of the ecosystem in Silicon Valley.”

Ford currently operates two other research centers: one in Dearborn, Mich., which focuses on developing advanced materials and driver safety systems, and one in Aachen, Germany, which focuses on improving auto electronics and handling. The Palo Alto center will complement these two labs by allowing Ford to explore autonomous and semi-autonomous driving technologies. The campus is close to the headquarters of Google and Tesla Motors, both of which are working to refine their own self-driving car prototypes.

Ford’s new research center will be headed by Dragos Maciuca, an Apple veteran with experience in consumer electronics, product development, and semiconductor manufacturing. Mr. Fields said at the event that Ford is planning to collaborate with other Silicon Valley companies, including car-sharing services Uber and Lyft. (Ford would rather customers buy cars than use sharing services, but if Uber’s rise is inevitable, the company wants the shared cars to be Fords.)

Ford already had a toehold in Silicon Valley: the company opened an eight-person office in 2012 in order to try out technologies that could eventually be used in Ford cars. But Ford’s expanded presence in the area means it can perform more serious research, as well as tap into the talent pool of scientists and engineers who live in the area.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to With a new Silicon Valley research center, Ford commits to connected cars
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/0122/With-a-new-Silicon-Valley-research-center-Ford-commits-to-connected-cars
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe