Ford Finally Discovers Silicon Valley

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/ford-silicon-valley-research-center/

Interesting article.

They have actually had an office out there for a couple of years now, but are expanding and building a bigger one. None of it speaks to EVs though, it all speaks to connected cars, autonomous cars, R&D around technology more than it comes close to expanding their line of Electric vehicles. Tesla pretty much open sourced some of their technology and most of the automakers seem to not care or have no interest for some reason. Thats what I don't get. Ford speaks and promotes many things, they barely talk about the FFE.

Ford does such a poor job of promoting the FFE. I showed it to a guy driving a Smart EV and he said "I didn't know Volvo made an electric car"

At the Detroit Auto Show this past week the FFE was right in the middle of the Ford display. I was shocked! Last year it was tucked away off in a corner with the other two Energi products. Heck they even had a "product specialist" standing next to it to explain features, etc. I'm not saying Ford has turned a corner on promoting the FFE (because clearly they haven't).
My guess would be that there is a very small faction of Ford employees that like and actively promote the FFE, but there is no support from upper management.

jmueller065 said:

At the Detroit Auto Show this past week the FFE was right in the middle of the Ford display. I was shocked! Last year it was tucked away off in a corner with the other two Energi products. Heck they even had a "product specialist" standing next to it to explain features, etc. I'm not saying Ford has turned a corner on promoting the FFE (because clearly they haven't).
My guess would be that there is a very small faction of Ford employees that like and actively promote the FFE, but there is no support from upper management.

Click to expand...

Being GM is promoting their Bolt and Volt and so on whereas Ford barely said anything about the FFE, it kind of shows you how much they care about it. They promoted the fact they opened up a Silicon Valley R&D center to be closer to the tech sector and start working on Self-Driving cars, better connected cars, etc. Why they would put out press releases about Self-Driving cars over ever really talking about the FFE shows you they just don't see a market for it. I mean Self-Driving cars are a long ways off and yet they are talking about it. A 200 Mile FFE or any other Ford EV would generate a lot of attention. People are talking about the Bolt. Nobody is talking about the FFE.