Ford Motor Company has come out with patents for new seating configurations and seating movement for driverless vehicles. One arrangement allows for the first row of seating to be tucked under the dashboard. Others will allow seating rows to face each other.
Ford's CEO is also planning on creating the Model T of driverless vehicles. I would have guessed that Ford's model of private car ownership will remain unchanged in the driverless age, except that Ford has launched a carshare program in London. This shows that Ford, alone among the traditional car manufacturers, envisions a future in which we do not all own our own vehicles.
Sorry for the lack of links here. I forgot all about this post for about two weeks. It's old news, but will be part of my knowledge base.
Ford looks beyond cars
Ford and Jaguar have entered into a joint venture with the UK government to put 40 driverless transit vehicles on the roads of Milton Keynes, a town outside of greater London, in late 2017. The UK is trying to position itself ahead of the US and Germany, but its plans are already behind Google in Mountain View, Uber in Pittsburgh, and the US Army in fort Bragg, NC.
And now, on June 25, 2015, there's news of Ford's deepening involvement in Silicon Valley, biking - a shift toward the idea of mobility rather than cars.
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