Drivers of Ford Motor Co. models will soon be able to hear what friends are Tweeting thanks to new technology, the automaker announced last week. The announcement quickly sparked a debate about whether it would improve driver safety or distract us even more.
Ford’s public relations team positioned the announcement as a way to enhance safety, because drivers will no longer have to take their eyes off the road to check their cell phones. In partnership with Microsoft, using technology called Sync, automobiles will read Tweets aloud through the vehicle’s speakers.
Here’s how it will work. New models of the Ford Edge and Ford Focus released later this year will be the first of the company’s lineup to have this new technology. (The autos will also be armed with Pandora Internet radio, which will allow drivers to create their own customized radio stations.). The Edge and Focus will take a drivers’ mobile devices and Sync (hence the name) information into their systems. Drivers will then use voice commands to tell the models when they want to hear Tweets.
Here’s a nice spot for a friendly disclaimer. I come from a Ford family – we buy them, we’ve worked for them and I was born in Dearborn, Ford’s world headquarters city in Michigan.
All of that aside, I still think it is a brilliant move for the company.
Here’s why. A year ago, while the economy was in the gutter, automobile companies were, well, whatever is worse than being in the gutter. Chrysler and GM took government bailouts, foreign companies took loans from their countries and customers weren’t buying. Slowly, Ford emerged from the Big Three as the survivor. Its stock price skyrocketed. Its cars picked up steam (and sales). The announcement of this groundbreaking technology is another notch in Ford’s PR belt and another chapter in its recovery.
Safety experts will continue to debate what this move means. I don’t think we should deny that people look at Twitter while driving (bad idea, by the way). Ford has embraced what people are already doing and has made it a little safer, I think.
Ford’s global director of connected services described this move best when he told CNN, “We take what people do – they talk on the phone, they fumble with mp3 players, they look at maps. We take these activities and make them safer.”
He’s right. Think of it this way – in 10 years, we’ll probably consider this new technology standard, just like the radio.
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Tags: Chad Previch, Ford Edge, Ford Focus, Ford Motor Company, Michigan, Microsoft Sync, oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Pandora, public relations, social media, Tulsa, Twitter