Kyle Johnson
No Comments

Ford Imagines “City of Tomorrow,” Outlines Brighter Future in 2021 and Beyond

Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size Text Size Print This Page
The City of Tomorrow, Decades and Decades From Now

The City of Tomorrow, Decades and Decades From Now

Unless you are a nihilist (which is, let’s face it, not a difficult disposition to justify these days), you have some vision for the future. Maybe it’s as simple as knowing what you want to have for dinner tomorrow—beef stroganoff, for example. Perhaps it’s something as grand as knowing where you want your career to have taken you in five years’ time, or the way you want your redesigned bathroom to look, or having an agenda for your retirement.

Heck, it might even just be thinking ahead to that day in 2021 where, ideally, the country in which you live will no longer be represented by a badly-aged orange handbag that thinks Mussolini had some good ideas and can’t help itself but to yell at celebrities on Twitter like a stupid, angsty teen. Not a bad thing to hope for.

Ford, too, has a strong vision for the future, one that it revealed this morning at the 2017 North American International Auto Show. This vision is called the “City of Tomorrow,” and it analyzes the interconnectivity of technology and developed urban mobility infrastructure to create a more harmonious transportation ecosystem. Wow, Ford, some of us are just cool with not setting civil rights back 50 or 100 years, but keep setting that bar super high!

Watch: Ford Imagines the “City of Tomorrow”

Ford’s City Solutions team has been hard at work with major metropolises around the world to develop mobility solutions. Tied into its continued development of autonomous vehicles—scheduled to arrive in that far-off year of 2021—as well as of electrified vehicles and ride-sharing through services like Chariot, Ford aspires to envision a better world even when all evidence around us suggests that it is perhaps unobtainable because it might not even be something humanity deserves. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“This is an issue that goes far beyond congestion. It is one that represents a massive challenge to mankind, one that affects our well-being and access to health care, clean drinking water, food, a safe place to live, and even the ability to find work,” said Bill Ford, executive chairman, Ford Motor Company. “By solving the mobility challenge, we have the chance to create a better world for future generations. It’s both an exciting opportunity and a big responsibility.”

Ford City of Tomorrow

Ford breaks down its vision of the future both in the near and long term. Within presumably the next two decades, Ford hopes that the proliferation of autonomous and EV technology as well as ride-sharing will lead to better communications between vehicles and infrastructure, made possible by Ford’s projection of having equipped at least 20 million vehicles with built-in modems by 2021. This, in turn, would create innovation within city transportation systems while simultaneously creating a safer, greener urban habitat.

Ford City of Tomorrow

Beyond that, Ford expects the development of high-speed public transit, drones, and proper utilization of data to create a world where traffic and accidents are things of the past and vehicle emissions are significantly reduced. It’s a bright and shiny future that very much belies the trajectory of our current reality, but, hey, the world needs optimists. If nothing else, it sounds far better than the vision of major cities being bleak necropolises policed by dog-headed beast-people and overseen by a gross-chinned and thin-skinned babyman.

“For more than 100 years, Ford has been part of the community and the trusted source for automotive transportation,” Fields said. “Now, we want to work with communities to offer even more transportation choices and solutions for people—for decades to come.”

Decades. Well, here’s hoping!

Next-Article-Button