Ford Motor Co.’s roots run so deep in Michigan, America’s automotive heartland, that it’s hard to imagine one without the other.
But when the 111-year-old automaker started to ponder a future of self-driving cars plugged in to the Internet, its executives realized they needed to be someplace else: Silicon Valley.
Ford last month opened a Palo Alto research center where 125 engineers and scientists will develop new technologies for the automaker while forging alliances within the valley’s tech industry.
“We can’t be just occasional visitors,” said Jim Buczkowski, Ford’s director of electronics systems research and advanced engineering. “It’s being able to rub elbows with, meet in coffee shops with, the innovation community in Silicon Valley. We had to step up our game.”
The Bay Area has become an unlikely hub of automotive research.
Part of the activity is homegrown. Tesla Motors, founded in the Bay Area, builds luxury electric sedans at the West Coast’s only remaining auto plant, in Fremont. Internet search giant Google, based in Mountain View, is developing its own self-driving car. And according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Apple has devoted several hundred employees to creating an electric car that resembles a minivan.
But older, established automakers have set up shop here as well. In addition to Ford, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan-Renault all operate research labs in the area.
They’re chasing a vision of cars connected to the Web, cars that integrate seamlessly with smartphones and other mobile devices that Silicon Valley pioneered. They’re also researching vehicles that can talk to one another as well as navigate, drive, stop and park on their own. The Bay Area offers a peerless pool of engineering talent.
“For all the criticism the Big Three get for being insular, the fact that they’re there in Silicon Valley shows that they get it,” said Matt DeLorenzo, managing editor at the Kelley Blue Book auto information service, referring to the large Detroit car companies: Ford, GM and Chrysler.
The new activity — from Tesla’s factory floor to Honda’s app lab — represents a rebirth of the Bay Area’s auto industry, albeit at a relatively small scale.
With the notable exception of Tesla, most of the Bay Area’s auto activity focuses on research, rather than building. And that probably won’t change. As much of a stir as Apple’s reported electric car has caused, many analysts say they doubt Apple would ever want to open its own auto plant, even if the project comes to fruition. And if the company did choose to open a car factory, it wouldn’t be here in the Bay Area, with its sky-high property costs.
“Primarily what Apple and Google want to do is have a lot of influence on the design and development of cars — they probably don’t want to build them themselves,” said Bill Visnic, senior editor of the Edmunds.com auto information service. “It’s like phones. They want to design them and determine how they work. And then they’ll hand it off to someone and say, ‘Build this thing for us.’”
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