 From Dearborn, Michigan, it's the Cube on the ground at Ford headquarters Now here's your host Jeff Frick Hi Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're in Dearborn, Michigan at the at the further with Ford Ford trends event 2-day media event to really get up to speed with what Ford is doing with autonomous vehicles and really the bigger trend about Mobility and we're excited to have Cube alumni a season Ken before he came on his wife's gonna get jealous the way we keep meeting like this Ken Washington the VP research for advanced engineering for Ford Ken It's great to be here and in your turf and not in Palo Alto for a change. Yeah, it's great to have you here Welcome to Dearborn. Absolutely. So a lot of exciting news You know we've talked to you over and over since this kind of journey began when you guys first opened up in Palo Alto Then a couple weeks ago Mark came out to announce really the moonshot He didn't describe it that way, but I described it that way You know fully autonomous cars level four and five years for ride-sharing services And then last week I get the announcement more news coming you guys bought chariot, you know Kind of a ride-sharing service and you announced the bicycle Initiatives so you guys are really all in on this mobility. This is not just you know talk and PR You guys are all in said it right. This is this is serious for us And we are absolutely serious about being an automaker and a mobility company. So absolutely So how do all these pieces play and I'm just curious culturally at Ford, you know We had Ken on before and and how do you get the culture around this thing that we're more than just a car company? Are people buying in is it a new day at Ford are they excited? I mean clearly you're excited clearly Mark's excited, but how's it kind of playing here in Dearborn? Well, it starts by being like I said all in and Our employees they they're noticing that we're all in because we're putting action behind our words And the action today that you're experiencing is we have our cars on the road today And we have been doing this for over 10 years and now we actually have the vehicles on the road Our employees can see that our autonomous vehicles are Working on public roads. They're they're going through stop signs through stop lights. They're recognizing pedestrians Navigating safely on a route. That's that's a true open public road That kind of evidence tells our employees that we're in this for real and that we are making very good progress And we've got great momentum toward our 2021 goal the moonshot that Mark talked about and We're making progress. We're getting there. You're getting there So what are the topics? I don't think he's talked about enough and it really should have got more pressed when when the poor fortunate guy crashed his His his car on autonomous mode, but he was not paying attention in the car crash You talked about Ford is going straight to level four and when we took our drive in the autonomous vehicle here Which was pretty fun, but kind of boring, which is what you hope in an autonomous drive You know, I noticed Gus our driver, you know had his hands the safety driver ready to go at a moment's notice And it really begs a question on these kind of halfway solutions because what's a driver to do if you think you're in autonomous mode? But it's not fully autonomous you have to pay attention do not pay attention and we all know it's about reaction time and Emergency so if you're already kind of not paying attention How do you get somebody to hey wake up and pay attention and then execute whatever the maneuver is? So you guys have just said forget that we're gonna skip right to fully autonomous. It's really important You said it well, you know, we we really put safety first and by putting safety first We we want to make sure that when you're in a vehicle and that vehicle has the capability to Assist you as a driver that we're clear that this is assistance as a driver All right, our vehicles you can buy today that have driver assist technologies on them And the vehicles that you'll be able to buy over the next few years Because we're tripling our investment in driver assist technologies They're gonna be able to assist you even better with driver with traffic jam assist and ultimately with highway assist These are great features for making the experience of driving your vehicle more enjoyable and a little more Comfortable, but they are driver assist technologies what you're seeing today with our fully autonomous test fleet our fully autonomous level four vehicles that the driver can be out of the loop and we're doing it that way for two reasons one is because it like you said you can't Wake up the driver and re-engage them if they haven't been engaged right right so in our research We found that that's that's a hard thing to do So we're focusing on level four But the second and probably the more important reason is because it opens up the business model to enable a ride service Well, you don't have to have a driver right so we're working toward that capability And as we work toward that capability We need to make sure we safely test the Features, which is why we have that safety driver there ready to take over control because it's still a work in progress Yeah, Gus was on it I was like Gus you got to be getting tired as his hands were like right over the thing the whole time But it really begs the question because again if it's not fully autonomous. It's not autonomous. It's an assist So you got to pay attention. That's exactly right The other thing I think is really interesting what you guys are doing is in this whole mobility thing from the bikes to the Cars to the ride-sharing service, you know somewhere along the along the line cars in the cities Especially are less about freedom and excitement in the open road and more about kind of traffic and congesting and parking challenges So you guys again getting out ahead of the curve on that by taking this kind of multimodal Full spectrum and getting engaged across the board a lot different than when you and I probably turn 16 and look forward to getting That first driver's license. That's right, you know The future customers are thinking about mobility very differently And even today's customers are when when they live in congested environments because the world is changing The world is getting more urban and much more congested and traffic patterns are a lot tougher today And parking is harder to find and a lot of the traffic that you see in inner cities are driven by Parking challenges and so having a solution that allows Allows people to have choice Like riding a bike or taking a shuttle and sharing that ride and being picked up at a location Where you are inhaling that ride from an app. These are made possible with with the technology that's available today We're embracing that and we're bringing it to our customers with our smart mobility program Right and ultimately we're going to bring autonomy to that as well But the first priority for us in autonomy is to open up that ride service on our campus in 2018 And then in 2021 for a ride service for the public So the whole another topic beyond the technology is the regulation So I was at a great event a bloomberg event put on by western digital a couple weeks ago And they had a bunch of representatives from the department of transportation There's a lot of really complex social and policy And those types of issues that have nothing to do with the cars and the technology That have to be kind of sorted out and you know, generally the government kind of trails technology because they're You know, they're kind of following as the developments come about What are you guys doing on that realm to worry about some of these kind of softer aspects of what's going to make autonomous vehicles really real Those are really important questions So they have to be answered and the only way you can answer those is by having a conversation with the entire industry We need to engage multiple oems multiple technology companies and have the kind of conversations with policymakers to inform them about What the art of the possible is so they have the facts And so that we can be part of the dialogue around how to set policies to help make it a good experience for people But also make it, you know, the right policy framework that allow these services to be used in a in an environment Where, um, you know, there needs to be regulation Yeah, so we're one of the Founding members of One of the first Coalitions to have these kind of conversations the self-driving coalition for safer streets And we're excited to be part of that along with a number of other Technology companies and and car companies So it's a good start, but much more to come much more to come. It's just really exciting times You know, we've been covering you guys for a while since you really opened up the Palo Alto Facility which now is tripling in size, you know, congratulations to you and the team We covered g e and you know what bill ru has been able to do a g e digital out in sander moan And again 200 year old plus companies, you know, really reinventing themselves around the digital future Software using the world as mark andryson likes to say really exciting times and and really kind of old steel Old industrial companies. So good job for you and the team Oh, we like to think of ourselves as a as a technology enabled mobility company and an automotive company And and we're walking to talk and silicon valley presence in our rick palo Alto facility is Is really helping us a lot to to accelerate our move to being an automaker and a mobility company As well as the innovations you're seeing here with our autonomous vehicle program And our connectivity work and our mobility work. It's all coming together to to bring the future of mobility to life It helps get get you up in the morning. Hi every day. It's It is a good time Yeah, absolutely. Well ken. I'm sure we've seen you again. We look forward to the next announcement they seem to be coming in rapid progression. So Look forward to seeing that and thanks for taking a few minutes. It's been my pleasure. All right, dr. Ken washington I'm jeff rick. You're watching the cube. We're in dearborn michigan at the ford mobility event actually the further with ford Thanks for watching