Ford Buys Software Developer Journey Holding

Ford Motor Co. is buying Journey Holding Corp., a developer of vehicle location and other services for “smart” transport systems. Terms were not disclosed.

Journey Holding was created last year by the merger of DoubleMap Inc. and Ride Systems LLC, both of which offer automatic vehicle location services.

Ford will merge the company with its own TransLoc unit, which specializes in management software for on-demand and fixed-route public and private transit services.

The resulting transit technology solutions group of some 200 employees will be headed by Journey CEO Justin Rees. Ford says the enterprise will serve more than 1,200 cities, corporate campuses and other businesses.