Ford chairman: Our new transportation revolution will be like going from horses to cars

Ford's executive chairman Bill Ford told an audience in Kansas city Wednesday that the current revolution in transportation will be like the change from "horses to automobiles."

His appearance was reported by the Kansas City Star's Robert A Cronkleton.

The change in the next decade alone, Ford said at the "Kinetic" forum on transportation at the Kaufmann Center for the Performing Arts, will be greater than that in the entire previous century.

"In the next few years, smart cars will be doing things you can hardly imagine today," Ford said.

And those changes stretch far beyond in-car tech. Ride-sharing and other new transportation concepts are changing the very nature of cars and car ownership.

And his company is changing with the times, Ford said. "We are rapidly becoming both an auto company and a mobility company."

Ford mentioned two pilot programs involving both Kansas City and Boston that use Ford's Transit van to provide on-demand transportation.

"The mobility revolution is here; not in a distant city in a faraway future, but right here, right now in Kansas City," Ford said.