Ford and Digital Transformation: Automotive Industry in Transition (CXOTalk

The automotive industry is undergoing dramatic change based on ACE -- autonomous, connected, electrified vehicles that rely on large datasets to power on-demand mobility services. This episode brings together three top experts to examine the near-term future of vehicles and the auto industry.

Paul Ballew is the Global Chief Data and Analytics Officer at the Ford Motor Company. David A. Bray is Chief Ventures Officer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Evangelos Simoudis is a technologist, entrepreneur, corporate executive, and VC. Michael Krigsman is an industry analyst and Host of CXOTALK.


For more information, https://www.cxotalk.com/episode/ford-...
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From the transcript:

Paul Ballew:

(01:32) Michael, thank you for the invite. Glad to be here! I’m the Global Chief Data and Analytics Officer for Ford, as you mentioned. We’re the group that’s responsible for everything for the enterprise: our data activities, data strategy, data management, data acquisition, but also all of our analytic activities that go throughout the entire enterprise, including new activities in the mobility space. So, we have the privilege of supporting the entire enterprise as we try to understand our customers, as we try to build better vehicles, as we try to do all those wonderful things that are out there in the future.

Evangelos Simoudis:

(05:20) Yeah. Well, thank you! So, for me, the automotive industry and, by extension, energy is a very complex industry. And, in my book, I started thinking about what is shaping the next generation mobility, as I call it. And, I would say there are four or five trends; I see four or five challenges that I see.

(05:51) First is the challenge of organization. We have more and more people moving to large cities, and particularly megacities; you know, cities with over 10 million in population. That is putting a lot of strain on both the overall city infrastructure and particularly the transportation infrastructure. We have, as a result of that, issues and challenges with congestion in many, many areas around the world. We are spending too much time commuting too and from work or where we need to go, and when we get there, we tend to be kind of exhausted and not productive. There are many cities around the world, there are many areas where you can see multi-hour commute times.

(06:44) Next, we have the […] challenge of pollution, and we’ve started seeing that in Asia, but more recently even Europe is starting to face these challenges.

(07:00) Next is the kind of aging population, and particularly in developed economies. These populations are starting to have special needs, and transportation is a very big component of those needs.

(07:17) And, finally, the various social and economic problems that are starting to arise around the world, and several of them gave rise to the sharing economy.

(07:30) So, in response to those challenges, I see a shift that is starting to happen from like a car ownership-centric model, to a model that combines car ownership with on-demand mobility and that’s what is starting to now shape the next generation mobility. And, as part of that, autonomous vehicles, both vehicles with internal combustion engines, but more importantly, autonomous connected electrified vehicles, are starting to be viewed as an important component for addressing some of these challenges in next-generation mobility.

David Bray:

(10:30) It’s not just about the technology. In fact, if anything, the technology is 20% of this. It’s the other 80% in terms of how people are living cities and how people are living in rural areas and want to commute to cities or commute to work.

(10:54) And then, it's also just a recognition that separates from all the technology, there are just so many demands on our day. I mean, we are now connected more than ever. So it may very well be that the younger generation, Gen-Y, and Gen-Z would prefer to have the car be as autonomous as possible so they can use their ride to work or ride wherever they're going to catch up on other things like connecting with friends and connecting with work, and getting work done, as opposed to what it used to be in the past, which was driving was a sign of freedom in some respects, and it was actually more cherished.

(11:31) I mean, I would personally love to sit in a car, take my 30-minute commute to work, and actually be productive when I’m doing it, as opposed to being focused on the wheel and being focused on the way there. So, it’s amazing how this is really a combination of human plus technology, and that it’s not changing incrementally. I mean, this is all changing exponentially, both in terms of what the technology and the sensors can do, but also the amount of data that’s being collected and being produced from these vehicles.