Ford has made it quite clear in recent years that it’s betting big on connected vehicle services and software, which are expected to represent a massive source of revenue for the automaker in future years. However, there are a couple of road blocks on this path to profitability, including concerns over data sharing – and more specifically – maintaining privacy while sharing all of this data. When speaking at the 2023 Morgan Stanley Sustainable Finance Summit, Ford CEO Jim Farley acknowledged these concerns and the fact that they’re a big source of tension among customers, too.
“I think we really like – not because Apple is Apple, we really like their idea about around privacy,” Farley said. “You can imagine how personal data is on a vehicle, like where you’ve been, how did you get there, who are you with. It’s really intimate data. So we think for our commercial customers, too, like their clients, like we really want to be on the right side of that. But we have to use the data of the car to make the experience really good, to make the software better. So it’s a huge tension.”
“I’ll give you an example, real one. So how many of you have rented cars and lied about the amount of gas that was in it when you turned it in, right? Like all of us, right? Yeah. So the rental car company comes to us and says, hey, that little float in the gas tank, don’t you know exactly how much is in there? Yeah. Why don’t you just sell us the data? And then we’ll charge people based on how much fuel is actually in their car.”
“So what do you do then? Now, we could sell the data to the rental car company. But if you’re driving a Ford, what’s our contract with the renter of that Ford? Should we sell their data because we happen to know how much fuel is in that, even though it’s actually, frankly, their data? That’s like one trillion examples like that of vehicle data coming off the car. How do you handle it practically from a privacy standpoint? I think we have the right ethos and values, but we almost kind of don’t know what we don’t know yet. So we’ll get into it. I don’t want to be entrepreneurial about consumers’ data. After looking what happened with Facebook and a lot of social media, I don’t want to be too entrepreneurial with my team.”
“On the other hand, I definitely need the data to make predictive failure of the components better for a plumber, because if I can sell them a car that never goes down, that’s very valuable to them. If you’re a plumber somewhere in Manhattan, you lose that van, you’re going to lose the revenue for that day. So if you have a vehicle that can self-diagnose itself and send warning signals to the owner two weeks before it fails, that’s really valuable to them. So I have to use the data to make it better, but I can’t – there’s a line.”
This is precisely why Ford has thus far been cautious with how it handles data, with many of these services focusing on the Ford Pro commercial side of the business – where customers are a bit more willing to try out new features that rely on data. Additionally, as Farley recently pointed out, Ford Pro’s software solutions have also helped with customer retention, to boot.
We’ll have more on Ford’s connected vehicles push soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for non-stop Ford news coverage.
Comments
I’d like to think Farley is a deep thinker on this topic, but I am skeptical. Is he really concerned, or is he just showboating because the issue is in the media at the moment? Tech has been the enemy of privacy for 25 years. Worse, tech has empowered the worst bosses, executives, and despots in the world with even more centralized control. America has never taken data privacy serious, and the clown show in DC has never passed some rather basic data privacy regulations. Frankly, data privacy is the #1 reason I’ll never buy an EV. They are surveillance machines that the “owner” has no control over.
This is really a very simple thing to resolve. When Ford/Lincoln starts selling OR EVEN GIVING my data to ANYONE I WILL STOP BUYING THEIR PRODUCT FOREVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SAME GOES FOR ANY OTHER MANUFACTURER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And if this F’ING government forces it i’ll keep the vehicle I have and never buy a new one !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have put my plans to purchase a new Mustang on hold until this situation clears up. There is no way I’m giving Farley $85,000 of my money just to have my new Mustang rat me out to the insurance company for no other reason than I went to the track one weekend and pushed the gas peddle down. Seriously, what does Farley think people do with their Mustangs? Put them in the garage and stare at them?