Today, Ford Motor Company announced the establishment of Ford Smart Mobility, LLC. With this announcement, “Smart Mobility” goes from being a company-wide initiative with an eye on the future of mobility in the connected age, to a full-blown Ford subsidiary.
Leading the newly-formed Ford Smart Mobility, LLC as its Chairman will be Jim Hackett, currently on the automaker’s Board of Directors. The new company will continue Ford’s mobility operations in Dearborn, Michigan and Palo Alto, California.
“Ford Smart Mobility and expanding into mobility services are significant growth opportunities,” says Ford CEO Mark Fields. “Our plan is to quickly become part of the growing transportation services market, which already accounts for $5.4 trillion in annual revenue.
“Jim Hackett is the right visionary leader – with extensive experience in business development and design – to take us into the mobility services business in the future.”
Ford said in a statement that the new subsidiary is set up to compete like a startup company, and will continue the automaker’s work toward bringing innovative mobility services to market, both on its own, and in collaboration with other tech companies.
“Ensuring the freedom of mobility requires us to continually look beyond the needs of today and interpret what mobility will mean to future generations,” says Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford. “This new subsidiary will enable us to develop mobility solutions to address the rapidly changing transportation challenges of an increasingly crowded world.”
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Ford Motor Co. will replace Chief Executive Mark Fields with Jim Hackett, the former head of office-furniture maker Steelcase Inc. who joined the auto maker in 2016, according to people familiar with the matter. and “Jim is a fantastic strategic thinker and has a very good network in Silicon Valley,” Fields said.