Bill Ford Isn't Scared of Apple
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I guess what I find more appealing about Auto industry culture is the general notion of accountability (give or take) with respect to products. Auto companies are not nimble, should not play 'fast and loose' with regulations like safety, and they have public shareholders as well. This is a different model - one that I honestly believe serves the Auto industry well - because there are perfectly reasonable avenues to take SV-like approaches - it's called R&D, and taking stuff out racing. WRC. BTCC. Le Mans. All sorts of different avenues!
This isn't to give Auto companies like Ford a free pass when they make mistakes (Firestone and Ford comes to mind) but rather acknowledge that there's still merit in their approach to creating, manufacturing, and supporting products.
A couple cursory Google searches hasn't yielded any hard data, but hopefully someone has come across data on this.
tldr; I don't disagree with your assumption for decreased ownership for personal transportation, but I don't see this changing for families that live outside the Urban core until decades from now.
> I'm interested in the birthrates for the 50-75th income percentile for living in major cities (not metropolitan areas).
"Apple doesn’t know how to handle a supply chain, or market its wares" that could also mean they can disrupt and disruption points are associated with market changes (check vapor engine vs fuel or iPhone vs every other phone).
“We are going to build smart cars, but we also need to build smart roads, smart parking, smart public transportation systems, and more,” and this is the critical point, I'm old in tech years... and I like my clockwork internal combustion engines, I like to be able to drive them but the future people may not, getting what that future mass wants is the million dollar goal. For example... people may not want a car but to get somewhere and for example in NY that sound more rational than in TX, can we build a company around providing "Car as a service" (you hear it first here from xlayn :p)
"the Ford executives believe that the firm’s in-house tech expertise is under-appreciated" or it can also mean they could leverage someone else expertise... (this is a question, I don't really know the answer).
Last but not least... he want's to get the company into something while keeping the strong advantage they have in what they are strong and not becoming a hipster startup (as in lets make a trillion dollar company around 140 characters but there is no revenue model)...
Edit: typos
5 minutes trying to use a Ford's music system makes it pretty clear that, at least for tech UI, they are awful. That they aren't publicly sheepish about it suggests that the guys in charge don't even notice the differences.
EDIT: Gen 1 and 2 are while the upcoming Gen 3 is built by Blackberry.
"Ford cited issues with Microsoft's complex software dragging down its scores with Consumer Reports and other consumer magazines being a reason it switched to BlackBerry."
- They don't make it easy to get someone to show you the system. (pts 1 and 2)
- They make it so that if you just leave your iPod (a lot of people didn't have the phone at the time) plugged in, it has to be prominently visible to thieves (pt 4)
- Despite them expecting you to use Sync for anything and everything, it's on an inner row of the steering wheel, requiring a really long thumb stretch to reach. (pt 6)
- Hitting the phone button when you don't have a phone set up with it, will disable the audio system (and thus, further Sync action) until next time you turn the car on. (pt 8)
[1] http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-strai...
I am currently driving a C-Max and some of your points aren't relevant:
- The dealer rep went to lengths to train me on the sync system even though I insisted I didn't need it. (Maybe it's different elsewhere)
- The USB connection is inside the cubby between the seats, so you don't need to leave mp3 players in visible locations.
- The sync activation is on the steering wheel, near the volume buttons, and is not at all difficult to tap.
All in all, Sync has a weird tiered command system which is why I don't use it much, but it's not for lack of physical design.
I've been burned so bad, I'll only look at vehicles that support Carplay in the future.
Right.
If you can't design a music system UI, what about something mission critical like the critical interface between human driving, and self-driving automation?
My impression is that part of the 'being in charge' job is not acting sheepish, no matter how bad your product is, unless you have a solution that is dramatically different at hand.
Personally, I'll swap a radio out in a heartbeat. A transmission, not so much.
PS: Car people sometimes do end up replacing the drive train. One guy I heard about replaced everything until his gear shaft was the weak point and it ended up breaking.
eg. Blackberry is getting into the car automation business too. Right now that's a "lol, ok" response from most people, but if you look at the tech they own and are working on (QNX) it makes sense as a possible direction forward for the company. Will it pay off? I suppose in 10 years time we will look back and it will be obvious whether the investment was worth it or not.
People keep these things for up to 30 years. I haven't had a car I kept for less than 10 years, and the average is over 10. There is a huge support network that goes into enabling this. At this stage in the game, are you willing to buy an Apple or Tesla product that you plan to keep for more than 10 years? Are you willing to bet that those Tesla supercharge stations will still exist in 10, 20, or 30 years?
This is what the average consumer wants.
What makes this time exciting is that there is an intersection of some amazing technologies, business models, and objectives for transportation: on-demand, renewables & energy, self-driving/autonomous, environment, etc. The best part is that multiple companies, new and old, are involved and want a piece of the increasingly bigger pie.
...Aren't these Apple's strengths?
If I want to buy a Tesla, I need to drive 150 miles and hope the thing never breaks. I have 4-5 Ford dealers within 20 minutes.
Those dealers are sales channels, service channels and capable of doing more stuff. With the right strategy, those legacy disadvantages can be advantages. If Apple is able to build the capability to build a car in a couple of years, it's ridiculous to think that a company in the car business for a century cannot do it.
This reminds me a lot of how advanced and amazing the avionics and support systems are on Airbus planes, and why shit pilots crash them whenever anything doesn't go exactly like a simulator textbook. It's a part of the future of automotive "advancement" that I'm not optimistic about. This is certainly a personal opinion, one coming from a guy who likes to really be involved while driving and has his fair share of mistakes on his record, but I think it's worthwhile to keep in mind.
Often it according to a simulator textbook but pilots haven't studied the text book enough so they end up being confused what mode the autopilot is on, override and crash the plane.
I think FAA even calls that as such -- "mode confusion".
Of course it could be the problem of user interface or warning and error reporting is not clear and explicit (alarm is blaring so they ... just ignore it because it has so many false positives).
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expande...
Interesting discussion in itself.
That shorting of the runway in San Fran? Every warning worked as intended except the pilot. The prop plane that went down in Taiwan? Pilot shut down the wrong engine.
Basically if we're talking about a person being unable to actually handle the needs of modern piloting - mode confusion as it were - then I'm suspicious that they aren't very good pilots in the first place. This is where I see the correlative in cars.
Just because lane-alert and auto cruise control can help an inattentive driver stay out of a crash doesn't mean the systems can't be compromised by a poor operator. That's kind of my thought process.
That's also worth keeping in mind.
Mostly because in recent times, pilot error has been the most frequent cause of crashes, to my knowledge, in Airbus planes. Whether that's being too stupid to avoid an active combat zone and get shot down, or turning off the wrong engine and causing a prop plane to crash in a recoverable situation (granted not an Airbus).
Basically, there are pilots flying in commercial aviation today that, practically speaking, are not qualified to be stick & yoke pilots but are commercial pilots because demand far outstrips supply in some parts of the world.
I'm very doubtful that the actual autopilot has saved any lives. It's more likely to just allow captain to nap.
Are you seriously suggesting a traveler of reasonable means will look at their ticket that says AirAsia on it and think they have made the best possible deicison?
I really don't think you'd see this without Tesla really setting the bar with the Model S. Now we're seeing GM, Ford, BMW, VW and many other auto companies making serious commitments.
I saw the documentary by BMW on making the i8 and while their technical knowledge/competency is impressive at this stage it seems they are way over-engineering when a simple solution would suffice.
The trouble with in-wheel motors: unsprung weight. Works great for big, slow vehicles like mining trucks. For smaller vehicles, the motor weight has to come way down. There's been some progress in this.
That said, when electric cars start showing up in the secondary markets, I'll probally buy one. I'll buy it to modify, and turn it into something I can drive on the cheap.
That's if I can get into their proprietary computers, or bypass all together, and government doesn't get too involved with regulations? By regulations, I mean right now in most states, the government is pretty lenient with collector cars. In CA, you can do a lot to a vechicle made before 1973. Guys of all income groups are into their older cars. I hope it stays this way. As to smog, global warming--I just don't think a lot of these older cars are on the road enough to make a huge difference. A modified electric car is something I would buy, or get excited about. I'm kinda looking for a used Prius that needs a new engine right now. I got excited about a used Prius when I heard the motors are so well engineered--they are outlasting the vechicles. Guys aren't rebuilding these engines. They are buying them whole from the junk yard for low prices.
I'm very interested in the production of standard drivetrains and chassis, analogous to processors and motherboards, that hobbyists and customizers can build upon.
Even if you strip everything down to bare essentials, you still need hundreds of parts in various materials. (Toyota, Peugeot and Citroen already do engine/chassis sharing on a couple of budget car lines.)
Current technology can't print a safe car windscreen, never mind a complete cab with safe crumple zones.
Car building is primarily a logistics, supply chain, and assembly problem, not a design problem. I don't think a self-printed car solution will happen this side of 2030 - if ever - and it will probably need nano-assembly to be viable.
But about 3D printing I agree. You can print paneling to your taste, but that's about it.
But then again all custom production is getting more and more accessible to end customer. You can order custom water jet cut sheet metal at your door these days.
Maybe something like this could happen: Order chassis and engine from BMW. Print side panels with CAD files you ordered from some Korean designer. Order hood from Jaguar and interior from Versace. Final assembly is done by "chop shop" who prints and orders all the necessary parts to connect the stuff you ordered.
In the example all assemblies affecting crash safety would come from respectable auto manufacturers, so I don't see the problem.
Major car manufacturers sometimes can't even get it right on their own products. E.g.: http://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/hyundai-tucson-slammed-...
As for the insurance question, that's just absurd. Your bicycle insurance isn't anything remotely similar to car insurance.
Correcting myself: it was a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle and more than 10 years ago, but still an interesting concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Hy-wire
>Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.
>“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20061205211900/http://www.mercur...
I think this highlights some disconnects between Silicon Valley and Detroit.
* Detroit hasn't made "belching" engines since the 1980's.
* Average car age is 11.5 years. [1] It's pretty clear that people are OK with the user experience in their vehicles.
* "Selling Cars" is not a market prone to disruption. The cost structure is hideous. Enormous capital is required for at least 5 years before you sell anything, and after that your sales trickle in slowly.
* "Mobility Services" may be an amazing new market; we'll see. 11.5 years means there are a lot of old cars on the road that people may want to replace, but it also means that people are OK with those cars, and that there are a lot of people who have a minimal amount of money to spend on a new car.
* Upmarket vehicles absolutely have to differentiate themselves in a number of areas, and while UX is increasing in importance, it is a middling 5th place after Safety, Quality, Reliability, and Performance.
* UX is difficult in automobiles. If you get UX wrong in an app, you can update, or your app can die and people will forget about it. If you get UX wrong in a car, people will hate you for it, but still buy your cars. [2] You can't download buttons and knobs [3] if people can't get used to your touchscreen. [edited]
* UX in autos can't be flashy or distracting, should get out of the way, be usable with 5% of the user's attention, but it must provide enough information and feedback to be used reliably and quickly.
1. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/07/29/new-car-sales...
2. https://www.google.com/search?q=cue+sucks
3. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a1531/421...
Disclaimer - I work for GM, these opinions are solely my own.
Fun fallout from dealership agreements is that it looks like GM and others can't legally do OTAs for their vehicles(dealer owns all software updates/upgrades) which gives Tesla a distinct advantage:
And by challenge, I mean it is a big mess.
Also, call me a fuddy duddy, but OTA updates for automobiles SCARE me. They should scare Tesla as well, and I hope they do. They've done well for now; in 5 years will they still have the same discipline? That being said - the OTA mechanism has a HUGE value proposition and they absolutely deserve the kudos they got for it.
FWIW they've got a pretty awesome bug reporting mechanism via the voice command "report <X>" which sends a snapshot of the car along with the description.
They also have the ability to pull more detailed logs remotely(with your permission). Had a few spurious messages come up, called service and they were able to pull logs, verify that it was fixed in an upcoming OTA and not an issue. Much better than having to drive to the dealer(which is ~2 hours roundtrip for me). It's very slick to be able to pull CAN bus + other diags remotely.
Doesn't Tesla show that updating over-the-air is feasible?
Old companies have calcified political structures and old managers that have enough political capital to detonate any change that threatens their fiefdoms.
Software/Services businesses are not slow and comfortable with huge moats that just appear. You can't afford to be slow and bureaucratic. You have to be constantly changing, reorganizing, and employees have to be comfortable living/working in a zone of continuous chaos ... where you aren't exactly sure what the next step is ... but you are experimenting to find out--and internal groups are always rising and falling ... and managers are always rising and falling.
On Bill Ford, I don't know the whole story on him, but I could see how he was a bad CEO and a decent advocate and visionary for these technologies. For a wealthy man who probably doesn't have to do anything, he sounds commendable to be trying so hard to contribute.
It's a bit of a shame in a way that the government bailed out GM and Chrysler because Ford deserved to gain more advantage out of that due to their good decision making. I hope that moving ahead they reap more rewards than they have in the past for their forward looking moves.
I'm still preordering a Tesla Model 3 in March, but I'll definitely keep my eye on what Ford has to offer soon.
F-150 is in fact, the best selling vehicle in the US, and has been for 35+ consecutive years :)
I believe this is true even if you cut out commercial fleet sales.
So, basically, apple may be able to make a profit doing a non-truck for sure, but counting out ford's ability to react would be .... dangerous.
The new smaller engined forced induction Ford trucks seem to be getting good reviews, so perhaps the segment is more open to innovation than I would've guessed
Though I'm not holding my breath for it.
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Tesla: 12,000 employees, about 50,000 cars/year, 0.24 man years per car.
Ford: 181,000 employees, 3,230,000 cars/year, 0.06 man years/car.
Tesla is heavily subsidized by government, sells an expensive car, makes very few models, and still loses about $4000 per car. Something is wrong there. Their head count is way too high.
Also they make ~20% profit per car but are reinvesting large amounts of capital for Model X/3 + Gigafactory.
Please don't go throwing around FUD like this without looking into things in a bit more detail. See their last quarterly report for the figures I referenced above.
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He _will_ be.
Obligatory SW:ESB reference aside, I think that the danger Bill may not be cognizant of is just how advantageous vertical integration is for companies like Apple. Other companies disregard it at their peril.
The thing is, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool car guy. I love cars, and probably will never own an electric car. I prefer my snarling twin-turbo V8 german bruisers that have an extremely high rubber-to-tarmac transmission rate.
But: I know which way the wind is blowing.
The CEO of Ford not being aware of the advantages of vertical integration? That's a joke. Until 1989, Ford made its own steel. They still operate foundries and rolling mills. The Ford River Rouge plant was once the most vertically integrated auto plant in the world - iron ore came in at one end and cars came out the other.
Apple doesn't make iPhones. Foxconn makes iPhones.
In a nutshell, his talk came down to this: Every business innovation that Silicon Valley thinks it created, Detroit thought of first, decades ago, and implemented, decades ago, and moved on, decades ago.
Vertical integration used to be a big thing in the automobile world; at one point everything was done in house. Once they began standardizing assemblies and other parts, they began farming out parts to external suppliers because there was no reason for them to control every aspect of the manufacturing process; it was cheaper to let one or more external suppliers handle that.
Everything old is new again.
This is what will slow down the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles, be they in the form of a transportation service initially or not. The infrastructure just isn't there yet.
Is there any car listing for $75,000 that doesn't inspire "object-lust"?
And the "point" of emphazing Ford's evolving stategy is to make it appear that Ford is moving and grooving with the times and won't be left behind and ultimately to have a positive impact on the stock price.
I'm pretty certain Nokia's problem was never focusing only on hardware. They focused on software all the time. The problem was that Symbian sucked and they didn't open up for alternatives until it was too late. Samsung actually does just hardware and they are doing fine.
[1] http://www.autoblog.com/2015/04/30/ford-f-150-profit-per-veh...
If it were that easy, why hasn't anybody done it?
PS: IMO, Samsung is in the perfect place to work on the software side of things. Sure, it would be expensive, but it's one of the few ways to push actual growth. Otherwise, there going to pull a Dell, ride the growth wave and then shrink as growth stalls.