A future beyond traffic gridlock Bill Ford

by birth and by choice I’ve been

involved with the auto industry my

entire life and for the past thirty

years I’ve worked at Ford Motor Company

and for most of those years I worried

about how am I gonna sell more cars and

trucks but today I worry about what if

all we do is sell more cars and trucks

what happens when the number of vehicles

on the road doubles triples or even

quadruples my life is guided by two

great passions and the first is

automobiles I literally grew up with the

Ford Motor Company I thought it was so

cool as a little boy when my dad would

bring home the latest four-door

Lincoln’s and leave it in the driveway

and it I decided about that time at

about age 10 that it would be really

cool if I was a test driver so my

parents would go to dinner they’d sit

down I’d sneak out of the house I jump

behind the wheel and take the new model

around the driveway and it was a blast

and that went on for about two years

until I think it was about 12 my dad

brought home a Lincoln Mark three and it

was snowing that day so he and mom went

to dinner and I snuck out and thought

it’d be really cool to do donuts or

maybe even some figure eights in the

snow my dad finished in early that

evening and he was walking through the

front hall and out the front door just

about the same time I hit some ice and

met him at the front door with the car

and almost ended up in the fraud hall so

it kind of cooled my test-driving for a

little while but I really began to love

cars then and my first car was a 1975

electric green Mustang and even though

the color was pretty hideous I did love

the car and it really cemented my love

affair with cars that’s continued on

this day but cars are really more than a

passion of mine

they’re quite literally in my blood my

great-grandfather was Henry Ford and on

my mother’s side my great-grandfather

was Harvey Firestone so when I was born

I guess you could say expectations were

kind of high for me but my

great-grandfather Henry Ford really

leave that the mission of the Ford Motor

Company was to make people’s lives

better and make cars affordable so that

everyone could have them because he

believed that with mobility comes

freedom and progress and that’s a belief

that I share my other great passion is

the environment and as a young boy I

used to go up to northern Michigan and

fish in the rivers that Hemingway fished

in and then later wrote about and it

really struck me and as the years went

by in a very negative way when I would

go to some stream that I’d loved and was

used to walking through this field that

was once filled with fireflies and now

had a strip mall or a bunch of condos on

it and so even at a young age that

really resonated with me and and the

whole notion of environmental

preservation at a very basic level sunk

in with me as a high schooler I started

to read authors like Thoreau and Aldo

Leopold and Edward Abbey and I really

began to develop a deeper appreciation

of the natural world but it never really

occurred to me that my love of cars and

trucks would ever be in conflict with

nature and that was true until I got to

college and when I got to college you

could imagine my surprise when I would

go to class and a number of my

professors would say that Ford Motor

Company and my family was kind of

everything that was wrong with with our

country they thought that we were more

interested as an industry in profits

rather than progress and that we filled

the skies with smog and frankly we were

the enemy

I joined Ford after college after some

soul-searching whether or not this is

really the right thing to do but I

decided I wanted to go and see if I

could affect change there and as I look

back you know over 30 years ago it was a

little naive to think at that age that I

could but I wanted to and I really

discovered that my professors weren’t

completely wrong

in fact when I got back to Detroit my

environmental leanings weren’t exactly

embraced by those in my own company and

certainly by those in the end of

Drake I had some very interesting

conversations as you can imagine there

were some within Ford who believed that

all this ecological nonsense should just

disappear and that I needed to stop

hanging out with quote environmental

wackos I was considered a radical and

I’ll never forget the day I was called

in by a member of top management and

told to stop associating with any known

or suspected environmentalists of course

I had no intention of doing that

and I kept speaking out about the

environment and it really was the topic

that we now today call sustainability

and in time my views went from

controversial to more or less consensus

today I mean I think most people in the

industry understand that we’ve got to

get on with it and the good news is

today we are tackling the big issues of

cards in the environment not only at

Ford but really as an industry we’re

pushing fuel efficiency to new heights

and with new technology we’re reducing

and I believe someday will eliminate co2

emissions we’re starting to sell

electric cars which is great we’re

developing alternative power trains that

are going to make cars affordable in

every sense of the word economically

socially and environmentally and

actually although we’ve got a long way

to go and a lot of work to do I can see

the day where my two great passions cars

and the environment actually come into

harmony but unfortunately as we’re on

our way to solving one monstrous problem

and as I said we’re not there yet

we’ve got a lot of work to do but I can

see where we will but even as we’re in

the process of doing that another huge

problem is looming and people aren’t

noticing and that is the freedom of

mobility that my great grandfather

brought to people is now being

threatened just as the environment is

the problem put in its simplest terms is

one of mathematics today there are

approximately 6.8 billion people in the

world and within our lifetime that

numbers going to grow to about 9 billion

and at that population level our planet

will be dealing with the

of growth and with that growth comes

some severe practical problems one of

which is our transportation system

simply won’t be able to deal with it

when we look at the population growth in

terms of cars it becomes even clearer

today there are about a hundred million

cars on the road worldwide and but with

more people and greater prosperity

around the world that numbers going to

grow to between two and four billion

cars by mid-century and this is going to

create the kind of global gridlock that

the world has never seen before

now think about the impact that this is

going to have on our daily lives today

the average American spends about a week

a year stuck in traffic jams and that’s

a huge waste of time and resources

but that’s nothing compared to what’s

going on in the nations that are growing

the fastest today the average driver in

Beijing has a five-hour commute and last

summer many of you probably saw this

there was a hundred-mile traffic jam

that took 11 days to clear in China in

the decades to come

seventy-five percent of the world’s

population will live in cities and 50 of

those cities will be of 10 million

people or more so you can see the size

of the issue that we’re facing when you

factor in population growth it’s clear

that the mobility model that we have

today simply will not work tomorrow

frankly four billion clean cars on the

road are still 4 billion cars and a

traffic jam with no emissions is still a

traffic jam so if we make no changes

today what is tomorrow look like well I

think you probably already have the

picture traffic jams are just a symptom

of this challenge and they’re really

very very inconvenient but that’s kind

of all they are but the bigger issue is

that global gridlock is going to stifle

economic growth and our ability to

deliver food and healthcare particularly

to people that live in city centers and

our quality of life is going to be

severely compromised so what’s going to

solve this well the answer isn’t going

be more of the same my great-grandfather

once said before he invented the Model T

if I had asked people then what they

wanted they would have answered we want

faster horses so the answer to more cars

is simply not to have more roads when

America began moving west we didn’t add

more wagon trains we built railroads and

to connect our country after World War

two we didn’t build more two-lane

highways we built the interstate highway

system today we need that same leap in

thinking for us to create a viable

future we are going to build smart cars

but we also need to build smart roads

smart parking smart public

transportation systems and more we don’t

want to waste our time sitting in

traffic sitting at toll booths or

looking for parking spots we need an

integrated system that uses real-time

data to optimize personal mobility on a

massive scale without hassle or

compromises for travelers in fact that’s

the kind of system that’s going to make

the future of personal mobility

sustainable now the good news is some of

this work has already begun in different

parts of the world the city of Masdar in

Abu Dhabi uses driverless electric

vehicles that can communicate with one

another and they go underneath the city

streets and up above you’ve got a series

of pedestrian walkways on New York

City’s 34th Street gridlock will soon be

replaced with a connected system of

vehicle-specific quarters pedestrian

zones and dedicated traffic lanes are

going to be created and all of this will

will cut down the average rush-hour

commute to get across town in New York

from about an hour today at rush hour to

about 20 minutes now if you look at Hong

Kong they have a very interesting system

called Octopus there it’s a system that

really ties together all the

transportation assets into a single

payment system so parking garages buses

trains they all operate within the same

system now shared car services are also

springing up around the world

and these efforts I think are great that

we’re leaving congestion and there’s

frankly starting to save some fuel these

are all really good ideas that will move

us forward but what really inspires me

is what’s gonna be possible when our

cars can begin talking to each other

very soon the same systems that we use

today to bring music and entertainment

and GPS information into our vehicles

are going to be used to create a smart

vehicle network every morning I drive

about 30 miles from my home in Ann Arbor

to my office in Dearborn Michigan and

every night I go home my commute is a

total crapshoot and I often have to

leave the freeway and look for different

ways for me to try and make it home but

very soon we’re gonna see the days when

cars are essentially talking to each

other so if the car ahead of me and I 94

hits traffic it will immediately alert

my car and tell my car to reroute itself

to get me home in the best possible way

and these systems are being tested right

now and frankly they’re gonna be ready

for primetime pretty soon but the

potential of a connected car network is

almost limitless so just imagine one day

very soon you’re gonna be able to plan a

trip downtown and your car will be

connected to a smart parking system so

you get in your car and as you get in

your car your car will reserve you a

parking spot before you arrive no more

driving around looking for one which

frankly is one of the biggest users of

fuel in today’s cars in urban areas is

looking for parking spots or think about

being in New York City and tracking down

an intelligent cab on your smartphone so

you don’t have to wait in the cold to

hail one or being in a future TED

Conference and having your car talk to

the calendars of everybody here and

telling you all the best route to take

home and when you should leave

so that you can all arrive at your next

destination on time this is the kind of

technology that will merge millions of

individual vehicles into a single system

so I think it’s clear we have the

beginnings of a solution to this

enormous problem but as we found out

with addressing co2 issues

and also fossil fuels there is no one

silver bullet the solution is not going

to be more cars more roads or a new rail

system it can only be found I believe in

a global network of interconnected

solutions now I know we can develop the

technology that’s going to make this

work but we’ve got to be willing to get

out there and seek out the solutions

whether that means vehicle sharing or

public transportation or some other way

we haven’t even thought of yet

our overall transportation mix and

infrastructure must support all the

future options we need our best and our

brightest to start entertaining this

issue companies entrepreneurs venture

capitalists they all need to understand

this is a huge business opportunity as

well as an enormous social problem and

just as these groups embrace the green

energy challenge and it was really been

amazing to me to watch how much brain

power how much money and how much

serious thought isn’t over the last

really three years is poured into the

green energy field we need that same

kind of passion and energy to attack

global gridlock we need people like all

of you in this room leading thinkers I

mean frankly I really need all of you to

think about how you can help solve this

this huge issue and we need people from

all walks of life not just inventors we

need policy makers and government

officials to also think about how

they’re going to respond to this

challenge this is going to be solved by

any one person or one group it’s going

to really require a national energy

policy and frankly for each country

because the solutions in each country

are going to be different based upon

income levels traffic jams and also how

integrated the the system’s already are

but we need to get going and we need to

get going today and we must have an

infrastructure that’s designed to

support this flexible future you know

we’ve come a long way since the Model T

most people never traveled more than 25

miles from home in their entire lifetime

and since then the automobile has

allowed us the freedom to choose where

we live where we work where we play and

frankly when we just go out and want to

move around we don’t want to regress and

lose that freedom we’re on our way to

solving and as I said earlier I know

we’ve got a long way to go the one big

issue that we’re all focused on that

threatens it and that’s the

environmental issue but I believe we all

must turn all of our effort and all of

our ingenuity and determination to help

now solve this notion of global gridlock

because in doing so we’re gonna preserve

what we’ve really come to take for

granted which is the freedom to move and

move very effortlessly around the world

and and it frankly will enhance our

quality of life if we fix this because

if you can envision as I do a future of

zero emissions and freedom to move

around the country and around the world

like we take for granted today that’s

worth the hard work today to preserve

that for tomorrow I believe we’re at our

best when were confronted with big

issues this is a big one and it won’t

wait so let’s get started now thank you