Ford sees Columbus as the ideal partner city for the company’s plans “to create the future of mobility,” The Columbus Dispatch reports. Jon Coleman, director of city solutions for Ford Smart Mobility, said Ford looked for alignment in the city space and in the private sphere, as well as “a strong non-profit . . . academic sector that can do a lot of heavy lifting (in the technology area),” according to the article. In addition to meeting those criteria, Columbus “bested six other finalists in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City competition to receive $50 million in grants from the federal government and Vulcan Inc. to develop the city into the nation’s proving ground for intelligent transportation systems (see our June 21, 2016 blog post).” Ford is “trying to figure out the 21st century vision of the Model T . . . a way to help people who were previously constrained by a lack of mobility to thrive and flourish.” For more, read the full article.
Ford partnering with Columbus to create “21st century version of the Model T”
