Ford, together with AT&T, Dell, and Microsoft, is launching a new “City of Tomorrow Challenge” in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Like the Pittsburgh program announced earlier in the month, the Miami-Dade City of Tomorrow Challenge aims to crowdsource and pilot mobility solutions from residents, community groups, and businesses. The Challenge builds on Ford’s existing relationship with Miami-Dade, which was cemented earlier this year when the automaker announced that Miami would be the first proving ground for its self-driving service.
It’s a suitable place for experiments in mobility, Ford says, because the average commute time in the county is some 15 percent longer than the national average – largely a result of the burgeoning population, which has grown nearly 8 percent just since 2010.
The Miami-Dade City of Tomorrow Challenge will run for eight months, during which time residents, groups, and businesses will be welcome to share their own mobility experiences in the area, and what transportation services might make things easier. It includes $100k for funding pilot programs to test the best solutions.
“We know that every city and county is unique, which is why the City of Tomorrow Challenge isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach,” says Ford City Solutions Vice President John Kwant. “Miami-Dade understands the need to seek out new ideas to improve the way its residents get around, and our goal is to provide the county with an easy, efficient way to engage people and do just that.”
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Ford is truly a failure when it comes to the automotive industry. In it’s last ditch efforts to find a foothold in the future it is trying to leapfrog into the “City of the Future” when it hasn’t even mastered the road of the present. Ford is giving up on selling cars beyond the Mustang because it’s cars are a complete failure. If Ford had decided to actually make American cars and not euro-wannabe-trash, their cars would have sold better. Ford had a hit in Australian called the falcon. it was a rear wheel drive muscle sedan like what we know as the Charger up here and it was a beast just like Australia’s GM Holden HSV cars. Americans wanted car’s like that and GM said, yeah we’ll bring them up, Ford’s dumb CEO’s said “no, we want to focus on make faux-European cars with a bunch of technology disasters. we want to focus on bringing the European experience to American drivers. This just in Ford, We’re American! you know, the same bunch of people who wanted to break away from Europe in the first place?? yeah that’s us! Not to mention, they failed at even bringing an American experience to the people except for the fact of expensive repairs and even still, most European vehicles last longer than fords before you have to do those expensive repairs so add another failure to Ford. Now Ford has it’s strong points, the Mustang and the F150 and hopefully the new Bronco and Ranger will bring some credibility back to the game, but Ford needs to do a lot better than what its doing. Yes the new Mustang is a very nice car, it needs a lot of work but it’s a nice car. Prayerfully the S650 Chassis will bring improvements to the car’s abilities but at this point the GT needs the stuff from the 2019 GT350 to make it what it needs to be along with an increase in torque. Another future Ford failure is going to be that electric Mach 1 vehicle. I’m not doubting the vehicle because I’m sure it will be a decent electric performance vehicle but the name is the problem. That name should be an exclusive to the Mustang. Speaking of which, I think it’s time that Ford bring out another Mach 1 Mustang along with a Boss 351. There are other things Ford needs to do as well but I’m not going to harp on all of them because I’d run out of room and time. But Ford, you have being Failing On Record Diligently (yep new acronym for FORD) and it’s time you stop! Either start making American vehicles, or get out of the game so we can make more room for GM to do some big things (like hopefully the return of Pontiac)