The Car of Tomorrow

It was always assumed that when speaking about futuristic cars that someone meant a "Flying car" or hovercraft of some kind... some envision a nuclear powered speed machine... but Ford is going for something much more realistic, and expectations are high but believable.


Some of the speakers at today’s Techonomy Detroit conference talked about how entrepreneurship and technology can help Detroit diversify its economy beyond automobile manufacturing. But that doesn’t mean we have to give up on the car companies.

Ford, for example, seems to be in the middle of a reinvention. At the conference, I had a chance to interview Paul Mascarenas, the company’s CTO and vice president of research and innovation, about Ford’s vision for the car of the future — a vision includes some pretty dramatic changes.

Mascarenas distinguished between the near-term (the next five years), the mid-term (5-10 years from now), and the long-term (10-15 years and beyond) future. In the near-term, he said Ford vehicles will look more-or-less the same, but they’re going to be more fuel efficient and increasingly electric. We’re also going to see more driver assistance features that try to improve safety.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/12/ford-paul-mascaneras-techonomy/