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Bill Ford says carsharing helps Ford, EVs need to be clean

To most people, Bill Ford is most famous for being the great-grandson of Henry Ford. But, as the executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, Ford has also been leading the company into greener and greener territory. At the morning plenary session for the 21st World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in Detroit today, Ford discussed a wide variety of topics, including connected cars (of course), plug-in vehicle and how Ford's collaboration with Zipcar came about because of he liked what the Zipcar CEO was excited about getting cars off the road. Given that the conference has a big focus on communication between cars this year, it's no surprise that Ford talked about his company's work on that front. He's looking at the long term, though, and says that despite announcements like the one General Motors made yesterday about Super Cruise, when fully autonomous vehicles get here, it won't be headline news since the ground work is being laid by technologies coming to cars in bits and pieces now. In other words, your adaptive cruise control is getting ready for bigger and better things. "My fear is that we electrify the fleet and our impact is not what it could be." – Bill Ford On the zero-emission vehicle front, Ford said that while he's in favor of electric vehicles, "My fear is that we electrify the fleet and our impact is not what it could be." He was discussing the emissions reality of coal-powered electricity, and said that, "We've got to have a national discussion about what we want our grid to look like." As for the work that Ford is doing with Zipcar (which is just one of the many automaker carsharing operations out there today), Ford said that he first approached Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith after hearing Griffith talk at a green conference four or five years ago. Griffith was surprised, Ford said, because he had just given a talk about ways to reduce car ownership. "Did you hear my speech? I talked about taking cars off the road," Ford remembers Griffith saying. "Yeah, and what's going to happen without us," Ford responded. Today, the partnership allows Ford to get cars to people that have traditionally been "hard to reach," like college students on campuses. Ford's vehicles are currently available on 250 colleges campuses. Ford then spoke favorably about other challenges to the traditional car ownership model, like Lyft and Relay Rides. "Rather than being frightened by that, we need embrace it and help makes their companies better," he said.

Ford fights back against patent trolls

Some people are just awful. Some organizations are just as awful. And when those people join those organizations, we get stories like this one, where Ford has spent the past several years combatting so-called patent trolls. According to Automotive News, these malicious organizations have filed over a dozen lawsuits against the company since 2012. They work by purchasing patents, only to later accuse companies of misusing intellectual property, despite the fact that the so-called patent assertion companies never actually, you know, do anything with said intellectual property. AN reports that both Hyundai and Toyota have been victimized by these companies, with the former forced to pay $11.5 million to a company called Clear With Computers. Toyota, meanwhile, settled with Paice LLC, over its hybrid tech. The world's largest automaker agreed to pay $5 million, on top of $98 for every hybrid it sold (if the terms of the deal included each of the roughly 1.5 million hybrids Toyota sold since 2000, the company would have owed $147 million). Including the previous couple of examples, AN reports 107 suits were filed against automakers last year alone. But Ford is taking action to prevent further troubles... kind of. The company has signed on with a firm called RPX, in what sounds strangely like a protection racket. Automakers like Ford pay RPX around $1.5 million each year for access to its catalog of patents, which it spent nearly $1 billion building. "We take the protection and licensing of patented innovations very seriously," Ford told AN via email. "And as many smart businesses are doing, we are taking proactive steps to protect against those seeking patent infringement litigation." What are your thoughts on this? Should this patent business be better managed? Is it reasonable that companies purchase patents only to file suit against the companies that build actual products? Have your say in Comments.

All the details on Plug In 2014 electric vehicle conference you could ever want

One of the best parts of the Plug In 2014 Conference in San Jose, CA last week was getting to listen in on thoughts about the state of the plug-in vehicle industry from people who have been involved with it for ages. They bristle when you call them the "Old Guard" (learned that one the hard way), but these are the people who have been through a number of ups and downs with plug-in vehicles, so they've got what we call perspective. Their knowledge was on full display in the three plenary sessions, which the Plug In Conference organizers have given us permission to share with you. Each is at least 90 minutes long, so make sure to set some time aside to enjoy the discussions after you download them (any help with making them streamable would be appreciated). Follow us below to see what we've got to offer. Opening Plenary (audio link). "The Road Ahead – Delivering on a Vision for Sustainable Transportation." Moderated by Mark Duvall (director of energy utilization at EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, and a long-time EV advocate), this panel featured: Jack Broadbent, Executive Officer / APCO, Bay Area Air Quality Management District Pat Romano, President & Chief Executive Officer, ChargePoint, Inc. Aaron Johnson, Senior Director, Customer Programs, Pacific Gas and Electric Company Brendan Jones, Director, EV Sales Operations & Infrastructure Deployment, Nissan North America, Inc. David W. Cash, Commissioner, MassDEP Dan Sperling, Director, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis Highlights: Educating drivers to "get over the gas station" is a key strategy, how Level 2 and DC Fast Charging are really "a new paradigm," that there have been well over 214,000 EVs sold in US as of July 2014 and where Nissan sees huge potential for more EV sales (Northeast US and medium-size cities like St. Louis and Pittsburgh). Wednesday Morning Plenary (audio link). "Getting to the Mass Market – A Discussion of Ideas for Widespread PEV Adoption." Moderated by John Gartner, research director for smart transportation at Navigant Research.