Ford Motor Company is accelerating its drive to deliver a broad suite of mobility products and services with the acquisition of Autonomic and TransLoc.
Ford’s stated mobility strategy is to deliver a broad suite of products and services that enhance all layers of the transportation system — vehicles, infrastructure, connectivity and digital services — to alleviate the transportation drag on cities and help people move more freely in the city of tomorrow.

“We believe transportation done right — as part of a systems approach — can bring life back to our cities,” says Marcy Klevorn, president of Ford Mobility. “By accelerating our delivery of mobility services through the changes we are making today, we are enabling that revival, enhancing our competitiveness and creating long-term value for Ford shareholders.”

This year, Ford expects to accelerate and launch businesses in the following areas:

* Transportation operating system: The company’s open, cloud-based platform — the Transportation Mobility Cloud that manages information flow and basic transactions between a variety of components in the transportation ecosystem — will be expanded beyond Ford to include other automakers, suppliers, partners and cities; a developer network to build and support the system also will be launched.

* Connectivity: Preparing to deliver digital services to personal, fleet and city customers, Ford’s mobility team will deliver on the company’s commitment of 100% connectivity of new vehicles in the US by 2019 and push toward its goal of 90% connectivity globally by 2020.

* Ride sharing: Chariot, the cornerstone of Ford’s microtransit solutions, will see an acceleration of city launches globally this year; launches will be based on a major shift in focus to the unit’s enterprise business, which provides employee transportation services for businesses. Last week, Ford announced the launch of service in Columbus, Ohio — Chariot’s fifth city.

* Non-emergency medical transportation: Tapping into the growing healthcare transportation market, Ford Mobility will expand its non-emergency medical transportation operation from a Southeast Michigan pilot with Beaumont Health into a full business serving multiple medical systems.

* Vehicle management as asService: Founded in 2017, Ford Commercial Solutions is leveraging vehicle connectivity to deliver data services and fleet optimisation to the commercial segment, building on the automaker’s historical strength in serving fleet customers. Ford Commercial Solutions will expand its offerings globally this year.

To support this shift to innovation and delivery at speed, the company today is announcing an agreement to acquire Autonomic, which specialises in scale, architecture and leverage for transportation industry solutions.

Ford’s acquisition of Autonomic is expected to accelerate the automaker’s mission to establish the Transportation Mobility Cloud platform and support its plans to scale up other key mobility initiatives, including the drive toward full connectivity, Chariot and non-emergency medical transportation.

Ford is also acquiring TransLoc, a provider of demand-response technology for city-owned microtransit solutions.

Acquiring TransLoc allows Ford to leverage its operational expertise, network of city relationships, and proven track record of providing solutions to cities globally that can improve the rider experience with dynamic routing.

“As we deliver on our commitment to provide solutions for cities’ transportation challenges, an important part of our process is to determine whether to build, buy or partner the capabilities required,” says Klevorn. “We believe the integration of the technology and talent from Autonomic and TransLoc into our Mobility team will further bolster our ability to deliver robust solutions for personal owners, fleet operators and cities, with speed and at scale.”

The company has also reorganised the teams developing and scaling mobility solutions. They are Ford X; the mobility business group; mobility platforms and products; and mobility marketing and growth.