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Ford Smart Mobility plan moves forward with P2P car sharing

Back when 2015 was still just days old, Ford Motor Company outlined its Smart Mobility plan at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It consisted of 25 global experiments meant to test out various ideas, with a stated goal of learning how to better address future transportation needs and direct the company's efforts. Six months later, Ford is ready to take what it's learned and move to the next phase. During the keynote address at the 5th annual Further with Ford future trends event – this year held, significantly, in Palo Alto, California – CEO Mark Fields announced Smart Mobility is moving from experimentation to implementation. Mostly. On the more concrete action side of things, Ford Credit Company is working with partners in the US and London, England on a pilot peer-to-peer car-sharing program. Stateside, this will see it team up with Getaround, inviting some 14,000 people in six cities to sign up for pre-screened, short-term car rentals. Across the pond, Ford will work with easyCar Club, targeting 12,000 folks in a similar service. Smart Mobility will also bring the GoDrive one-way car sharing program under its umbrella, upgrading it from what it calls an experiment to an actual pilot program. Fields also revealed a new electric bike design called the MoDe:Flex. The sporty model joins its two previously announced brethren, the MoDe:Me and MoDe:Pro. MoDe:Link, the app that provides a variety of info and allows for eyes-free navigation using hand grips that give haptic feedback to parlay direction changes has been extended to run on an Android smart watch. There, the app can process a rider's biofeedback signals to alter output. For instance, in "no sweat" mode, the bike will pick up more of the workload as your heart rate increases, keeping you from overexerting yourself. None of the bikes are being offered for sale, or for use as part of any sort of sharing program. At least, not for now. Instead, they remain in the realm of multimodal mobility experimentation. Check out the video above for a closer look at Ford's P2P car sharing plans or move down for a look at its latest ebike. You can find lots of detail about the shift in the Smart Mobility plan in the official press release, which is also below. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

J Mays' legacy

Mays is by far not the first designer to use heritage design cues in his work.
The announcement that J Mays will be leaving his chief creative officer role at Ford Motor Company on January 1 ends a 13-year run in one of the industry's top design roles. While best known for having a hand in reborn classics like the Volkswagen New Beetle, Ford Mustang and Thunderbird (above), Mays' legacy is more complicated and nuanced than being considered the father of what is known as "retrofuturism".

Ford pulls official support from top-level NHRA teams

As the smallest team in the sport, it wasn't really a surprise when Dodge decided to pull out of NASCAR, but Autoweek is reporting that Ford is looking to pull the plug on its professional-level NHRA sponsorships following the 2014 season. With attendance and television ratings down, the article reports that Ford is just backing out of the top series but will remain active in the Sportsman classes of racing, which are geared more toward the grassroots and semi-professional racers.
This means that one of drag racing's biggest names, John Force, will be left looking for new sponsorship after next season. Force, 64, has been with Ford for 17 years, winning 15 championships in that time and winning almost half of all Funny Car events in his Mustang since he started working with Ford in 1997, but after 2014, there could be some big shakeups at John Force Racing.
According to the report, Force would consider is moving over to the Top Fuel dragster series, although he could also move to another manufacturer to remain in the Funny Car series. With Ford on the way out, this leaves just Toyota and Dodge as the remaining active automakers in the highest levels of drag racing.