At MWC Shanghai, Ford has unveiled its Smart Mobility initiatives. The company made numerous announcements aimed to deliver mobility solutions to people across the world.
Ford has announced four new SYNC AppLink partnerships that are aimed at offering the drivers their favorite apps with SYNC voice commands. Out of the four partnerships, three are in China, and one in Thailand.
Ford has always been a pioneer in using technology to find potential solutions for challenges to mobility across the world. It won’t be wrong to say that Ford was the first automaker to seamlessly integrate our increasingly connected lives with our commute. In 2007, the company introduced SYNC- a safer, smarter way to connect your phone with your car. Introduced in India with the Ford EcoSport in 2013, SYNC enables users to connect and operate their phones through simple voice-commands– with their hands safely on the wheels and eyes on the road, always.
Before I start with the interview, let me give a brief background of the Ford Innovate Mobility challenge. The Innovate Mobility Series is a global initiative by Ford to find out solution for mobility related challenges across various cities of the world. For the same, Ford Invited solution for different cities locally and asked them to develop apps using the latest technology to solve the mobility issues of these cities. For Mumbai, the challenge was to overcome the challenge posted by Monsoon. The prize money for this challenge was USD $30,000 and winner of this challenge is Khyati Majmudar. We had a telephonic interview with her and here are the highlights from our interaction with this bright young lady who developed this award winning app.
Ford has initiated the Ford Innovate Mobility challenge in July 2014 with aim to find out solution to local critical problems related to that region and then integrating it with their cars as apps. The winners for this series have been announced on 8th January 2015. Innovate mobility challenge series is an important part of the company’s Smart Mobility plan announced at CES 2015 by Ford CEO and President.
The winners have been announced for challenges for Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai. These challenger were to decrease time taken by medical assistance to reach at some traumatic incident in Delhi, to improve transportation in Mumbai during monsoon by providing real time traffic data and to provide health care solutions in villages of Tamil Nadu where mobility is a challenge. On global level, there are 11 such challenges which include reducing traffic congestion in heavily populated cities of China and improving goods delivery in Portugal.
