Speaking at the 2012 Mobile World Congress, Bill Ford, the
executive chairman of Ford Motors, outlined a plan for
“connected cars” to help avoid crippling traffic congestion
by mid-21st century. Connected cars are vehicles linked to
various mobile networks and intelligent systems and capable of M2M communication.
Need for Intelligence on the Road
Imagine roads with four times as many vehicles. That’s the
forecast—an increase in the number of cars on the world’s
roads from one billion in 2013 to four billion by 2050. To avoid
the global risk of overcrowded roads, Bill Ford proposes
creating an intelligent global transportation network that
integrates communication between vehicles, a transport infrastructure, and individual mobile devices. He said:
If we do nothing, we face the prospect of “global
gridlock,” a never-ending traffic jam that wastes
time, energy and resources and even compromises
the flow of commerce and health care.
Cross-Industry Collaboration Needed
for Success
In order for his proposed solution to succeed, the automotive
and telecommunications industries need to cooperate; and
their engineers and IT experts will need to collaborate. New
networking technologies and business relationships are critical to success. Ford explained:
No one company or industry will be able to solve the
mobility issue alone and the speed at which solutions
take hold will be determined largely by customer
acceptance of new technologies. The telecommunications industry is critical in the creation of an interconnected transportation system where cars are
intelligent and can talk to one another as well as the
infrastructure around them. Now is the time for us all
to be looking at vehicles on the road the same way
we look at smartphones, laptops and tablets; as
pieces of a much bigger, richer network.
IT solutions are already tackling traffic congestion problems and shaping what transportation will look like in 2025
and beyond