Gadgetory

hello everyone welcome back to the cnet stage we're here live at international CES 2015 I'm Brian cooling me and joining me I'm very proud to announce we've got mark fields the CEO of Ford mark welcome Brian thanks for having nice to have you here you are new on the job but not new to Ford six months now is CEO we've had your predecessor Alan Mulally up here several times this is all from the time eight years ago when you were first here yeah to announce sync now eight years later is also mapped very much to the rise the Renaissance of automakers here at CES your quick take wire car makers at CES well I think we're here we've been coming here for eight years now because it's a great place to showcase our innovations and when you look at CES it allows us to reach a different type of audience but also when you look at the features and the technologies in our vehicles these days you know it's very much like a lot of the consumer electronics type of technologies that are here so it's a perfect match the industry has trended more toward an electronic information driven connected area are you differentiating less on the traditional values of styling and engineering absolutely not first you know we we think of ourselves obviously as a car truck company but also as a mobility company and a technology company so we're not going to take our eyes off that ball of great styling making sure we have great fuel economy safety great quality and smart technology in the vehicle because we realize you know what car is it is a very emotional purchase for folks then won't have to be in love with a car to buy a car it's a big deal exactly exactly people are spending a lot of money on it and they want to make sure that they're they're in love with it you talk about this technology you're talking about sync 3 is your new announcement and you were doubling down on your keynote this morning myford touch was a bit of a hiccup what about sing 3 is different you didn't just repair myford touch you made a clean break you've got a new technology partner under the hood with Q Nix what is the strategy now well first off with a with st. the original sink system in my for touch we've been extremely successful with that system we have 10 million vehicles around the world that have sink in it in my four touch we learned some lessons and we've taken those lessons and we've actually improved the quality of our current system where the latest JD power results were among the leaders in terms of quality and usability of the system so now what we've done is we've taken those eight years of experience eight years of feedback from customers and we've used that to create sync 3 which are next it's our next generation system so what it's going to have it's going to have more conversational voice activation so enhanced voice commands it's going to have a graphical user interface which is more to ative to use it'll be more smartphone like so you can pinch and swipe and do things that you're doing on your smartphone it'll be faster so the latency will be much more responsive it will also have series eyes-free on it so customers who have iphones and then finally it'll also have the ability to get used Wi-Fi to get updated as we update sync 3 over time a customer will be able for example to use their home Wi-Fi and be able to do that through their vehicle this brings me to the area of how you're going to integrate apple carplay or android auto you're a partner with both at what point do you give up some real estate to them or not do you float all three systems i'll have a four to the future with car play android auto and sync 3 and how do you parlay that to the driver well that's a really important question because as a manufacturer and as a brand we want to make sure that our Ford's all have the Ford taste to it in terms of the feel how the vehicle how the customer interacts with the vehicle at the same time we also have to realize that customers have their phones and they like their phones and they like the way those is the the detention if you will it's its attention but also our approach is how do we collaborate how do we make sure we can satisfy that desire of the customer but at the same time not give up control of the vehicle things like the climate control things like you know navigation things like how you use your phone you don't let it on auto player into those critical systems do you well those mission-critical systems they get into you know braking acceleration things of that nature clearly the safety of our customers is the most important thing and we want to make sure there's a true you know bifurcation in our systems and a firewall between that but for us it's all about you know collabera the first listening to the customer and then working a partner with it you're partnering with others as we're doing with with Google on a number of different things and as we're going to do on carp light you heard our I heard you today say in your keynote you made very clear the relationship on data is going to be one where its user permission from these new apps and services nothing released without forward permission underneath that that I also read oh by the way Apple and Google it's our relationship with the customer is that also being said in there well I think you know this is kind of a bit of uncharted territory in the industry as we go forward first off you have to have customers who are willing to share data and are willing to opt in and for us as a company this is a new area for them they know about showing on their phones but the car is different right it's different its location it's where you're at its speed it's all those type of things so for us we want to make sure that we are trusted stewards of that data customer owns the data and we want to be trusted stewards so at the end of the day first and foremost it's customers data and we have to be trusted stewards of that and not thinking that other companies ourselves can do land grams in a quick-draw address that the Chevy folks did a couple days ago they talked about rolling out some new OnStar services that allow you to do basically offers and coupons tied in to where you're going or along your route where do you see from the Ford point of view offers and merchandising in the interface whether it's through sync 3 I guess the throat would be if it's in your purview you want to get into that is there a place where you want to have a merchant relationship or a merchant stewardship between businesses and your drivers well I think we have to tread very carefully here and again for us it's all about listening to our customers and anything that we do in terms of sharing the customers if we if we get access to the customers data and they allow us to the customer has to see value coming back to them I don't necessarily think you know doing you know sending coupons or merchandise sing or things of that nature I don't know what other manufacturers are doing she's tried it for years and walking by a starbucks and getting a coupon doesn't necessarily mean you want a coffee well I can't speak to what other manufacturers doing all I can say is we're listening to our customers is and as we're taking the opportunity to use their data we're trying to ask them what type of services do you want what do you value because if you're giving up this data the customers going to want to see something of value so it's simply asking them and that's the journey that were on it's not trying to invent appetites on their behalf but to read them exactly now let's turn to an area that was I think a little more surprising for folks in your keynote today you talked a lot about very broad mobility policy infrastructure how we use personal transportation getting away from any particular tech or car model where are you going with that and why bring that here well first off you know we were here in the keynote talk about the traditional things talking about you know the products that we have talked about sync three the autonomous semi-autonomous features that we have on our vehicles today the development of fully autonomous vehicles that we have in the pipeline but we're thinking of ourselves not only as a car and truck company but it's a mobility company and as a company it's really important always to look at trends in the marketplace just like we did eight ten years ago when we saw the rise of mobile phones and smartphones and which led us to the development of sync now we're looking at things like the growth of these huge cities these ten million population plus cities around its mega cities prints you know the population density more than we can ever imagine we're looking at the growth of the global middle class it's going to double in the next 15 years and one of the markers of that and rites of passage is being able to drive a car so there's gonna be even more cars on the road and then looking at things like the health of the air quality that's impacted by congestion and things of that nature so we're stepping back as a company and asking ourselves how do we want to take our tradition of innovation and take innovation and use it to help solve some of these very pressing global transportation and mobility issues because we want to be viewed as part of the solution and by doing that we think will obviously run a good business and they'll be business models in there for us but more importantly it will satisfy customers and help create a better world to allow people to be more mobile to some people they're going to hear in that vision the idea that people are gonna be pushed more toward transit and a little more from personal cars or they're going to spend less time with their personal car maybe fewer than will own a personal car there's a lot of unused capacity in the world of personal cars is there any how do you work against thats true against that especially into emerging markets where it's a blank slate they don't have their first car yet well I think first you have to step back and we are a growth company in a growth industry if you think about the global car industry it's more or less the past year it's about a two trillion dollar business when you add up purchase of vehicle services those type of junks go out to 2020 our view is that it will be a three trillion dollar industry that's a trillion dollars of growth so you got to step back and open up the lens and say first off we're in a growth business there's plenty of growth there so even as we see in some instances in the major urban areas where potentially there could be less vehicles per 1,000 be a cup of people than they've ever been before but that's okay there's business models in there and business opportunities for us to provide mobility solutions that aren't even on our radar screen resolutions were that means more things that interact usually but not necessarily I mean what we talked about today was these 25 global experiments that we're doing around the world to solve some of these problems and it's amazing so then the apps you rolled out today exactly and for us what we get out of it is first off we're a global company so we get to learn from the the customers in that part of the world how they're viewing their mobility issues and gives us insights the second thing it does it allows us to forward the conversation about mobility and the third thing it does it introduces us with to some great partners that we might want to partner with going forward to provide solutions and a good business for us okay I don't want to hold you too long detroit auto show coming up starting press days on the twelfth you next monday give us a little teaser it's k a very exciting show Ford Motor Company and we really look forward to you being there did you take all the tech and put it here you hold something from we have we have so much where we're doing a lot here at CES and we'll have a lot of light oh you bet hi mark thanks a lot spring all right mark fields is the CEO Ford Motor Company joining us here live cnet coverage of international CES 2015 I'm Brian Cooley sit tight we've got more coming up