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