Tag: ford

Smartwatches and fitness bands are becoming more commonplace and may help to create smarter cars.

Wearable technology is becoming extremely popular, particularly when it comes to various types of health and fitness trackers, though smartwatches are slowly on their way in, as well. Ford hasn’t failed to notice this.

Moreover, Ford has not failed to notice the opportunity that wearables could present for its vehicles.

Scientists and engineers working for the automaker are currently looking into ways to integrate wearable technology and vehicles in order to improve driver assist technologies in a way that is much more customized to the unique experience of the driver who is behind the wheel. Of particular interest to the researchers is the detection of a stressed or sleepy driver and ways to help to promote a safer road experience as a result of the awareness of those conditions.

The Ford Research and Innovation Center researchers think wearable technology could bring vital health data to auto tech.

This could allow information about the condition of the driver to be shared with the in-vehicle technologies, such as the Blind Spot Information System and lane-keeping assist. For instance, Ford described a way in which wearables could be integrated into lane-keeping assist by causing the system to become more sensitive if it should detect that the driver had not received adequate sleep during the night before.

Connection to a health tracker could also work with the adaptive cruise control if a driver’s heart rate spikes with an increase of traffic, as it could encourage the vehicle to boost the distance between itself and the other vehicles around it. This could provide the driver with more breathing room and reaction time in order to decrease stress levels and raise road safety.

According to the vehicle design and infotronics global manager at Ford Research and Advanced Engineering, Gary Strumolo, “Wearable technology integrated with the vehicle allows for more accurate biometric data to stream continuously and alert active driver-assist systems to become more sensitive if the driver shows signs of compromised health or awareness.” It will be interesting to see how such technology fares in safety testing when it comes time to release it.

The automaker will be attaching devices to feature models to broadcast information to customer smartphones.

Ford dealerships could soon have a new way of making sure that customers visiting showrooms will learn about the hottest features associated with certain models as the company pilots a geolocation technology based marketing program.

This would send key info about a model directly to a consumer’s smartphone as he or she approaches it.

The hope is that this geolocation technology will help to make it easier to close a sale. The consumer will receive information only about the models that have caught his or her attention, as the tech sends the information about the models that the potential buyer has approached, as he or she walks around the vehicle. It is as though the vehicle will be able to give its own sales pitch, regardless of whether or not an associate is present at that specific moment.

The geolocation technology will allow customers to enjoy a more independent sales process.

Many consumers do the majority of their research online, using an automaker’s website to be able to learn about the features, options, and pricing of a vehicle. Actually visiting a showroom floor is essentially at the very end of the purchasing cycle, when the consumer is quite close to making a final decision.

This indicates that consumers are more interested in finding out a large portion of the information about various vehicle models on their own, and that an actual sales associate at a dealership has a notably smaller window of time in which to close a sale.

The Ford.com digital manager, global and mobile, Trisha Habucke, pointed out that “Even five or six years ago, people would actually go to the dealer four or five times (before making a purchase). Now they’re doing so much research independently that when they get to the dealership they don’t want to start over, they want to continue on and get their pricing and get their ‛why buys’ right there. And sometimes they want to do that independently,” ahead of actually speaking with one of the dealerships sales team.

The geolocation technology marketing is meant to help consumers to do that, so that they can still inform themselves in the way and timing that they prefer.