Have You Networked a Ford Lately?

Here's a sign of changing technological times: The Detroit Auto Show is going on right now, but Mark Fields, Ford's executive vice president and president, the Americas of Ford got here to Las Vegas in time for a cameo at Bill Gates' CES keynote speech to talk about Ford Sync, the new Microsoft-based networking system for cars which was announced earlier today at the Detroit car confab. After Gates' speech, I caught up with Fields to talk about Sync, which I blogged about when it was a rumor last week.

Sync is an in-dashboard gadget, controllable via voice recognition or steering-wheel controls, that lets you navigate and listen to audio players (includng iPods as well as Microsoftian models), transfer contact info from a phone to the car via Bluetooth, and listen to phone text messages via text-to-speech audio, among other things. (It also has a USB port that lets you charge your various mobile gizmos on the go.) It'll be available in twelve Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury models this year, with plans to bring it to all Ford Motor Company vehicles by 2009. Ford's deal with Microsoft will make it the only car company with Microsoft Auto-based products until the end of 2008.

As I chatted with Fields, I got the sense that he's used to his conversations with journalists centering around the recent woes of Ford and the entire U.S. car industry, since he spoke of Sync not just as an interesting, innovative, and (one hopes) useful device, but as tangible evidence that Ford has its act together. Sync "shows that our turnaround is product-led," he said, saying that in the past, Detroit has often released technology products that weren't always easy to use and which didn't always even solve real problems for customers.

Why Sync, and why now? Fields pointed to the explosion of Bluetooth-equipped phones in recent years, as well as of digital audio players, and said that Ford sees Sync in large part as a safety product, one whose voice commands and steering-wheel buttons will help drivers keep their eyes on the road. And he said that only now was it possible to make such a system seamless and simple enough to be truly practical.

"We're trying to leapfrog the competition and customers' expectations," he said. And he added that Sync will be upgradeable, letting Ford add new features over time without making customers buy new hardware.

I asked him why Ford chose to work with Microsoft on this project, and his answer was surprisingly human rather than technological. He said that Bill Gates and Ford Chairman Bill Ford are friends, and that Gates's philanthropic efforts have included donations to Greenfield Village, the living history museum founded by Henry Ford.

"Microsoft is a great American company with a history of innovation, and Ford has a similar background...the two teams have worked really well together," he said. And he said that it's been instructive to work with a company that has "a different clockspeed" than Ford, noting that the auto business is one in which new products are typically in the works for three to four years before they see the light of day.

For now, Sync is an option, and one at as price which hasn't been announced, although Fields told me that Ford will "make it a very good value." But he does think that networking will eventually be as standard a feature as a CD player is today--"not near-term or short-term...it'll be a while out, but I see a day when it'll happen."

Talking to Fields about Sync was intriguing. Coming to any conclusions about the system, however, is something that's impossible to do without seeing (and hearing it). I like the idea--I also wonder about Microsoft's ability to build the sort of rock-solid, utterly simple device I'd want in my car, espcially since "Bluetooth" and "seamless" aren't two words I naturally think of in conjunction with each other.

Fortunately, I should get the chance to see Sync close up later this week--and when I do, I'll report back here.

Stay tuned for that and other CES news...and check out all the show coverage that my PCW colleagues are already cranking out, even the show really gets underway tomorrow.