Bill Ford: Startups Will Guide Company’s Changeover

Chairman Bill Ford tells a mobility conference in Israel that Ford Motor Co. will rely on startups to meet the new-mobility challenges sweeping through the auto industry, Automotive News reports.

“Any corporation that thinks it has all the answers is A) arrogant, or B) ignorant,” he declares. “I’m really insisting that our management doesn’t act like we’re the center of the universe, because we’re not.”

Ford was speaking at today’s 7th annual EcoMotion mobility conference in Tel Aviv. He also told AN later that not all the industry’s traditional suppliers will be able to help the company as it grapples with the implications of vehicle electrification, connectivity and autonomy. “Some of them can, but some of them can’t,” he says. “Our needs are so different now than they were five years ago.”

Ford is expected to open a development center in Tel Aviv tomorrow to work with Israeli startups in the mobility area. Earlier today, the Renault-Nissan alliance announced the opening of a similar facility in Tel Aviv.

Ford says the company feels enormous urgency to transform itself to provide new transportation services and capabilities. If it fails, he says, “we’re going to be consigned to the dustbin of history, and that doesn’t interest me at all.”