Ford Motor Company’s Smart Mobility Tour Comes to Denver

Last updated on October 24th, 2018 at 07:14 am

Yesterday, Dianne and I were invited along with our friends from the Front Range Bloggers group – to see the latest technology that Ford Motor Company has been working on.  Collectively, they call these technologies – Ford Smart Mobility (#FordSmartMobility)

These technologies are not entirely limited to areas you might consider “home turf” for a car manufacturer.

Ford is looking at the entire transportation problem – from pollution to commuting, to “Multi-Modal Journeys” – meaning a journey which starts with one mode of transportation, and finishes with another mode (or two).

For instance – imagine the commuter who drives to the train-station, take a train into the city and then has to walk or cycle to their final destination of their office or workplace.

Enter the eCycle which may one day come to live inside the trunk of your Ford car…

Think of a folding, electrically assisted bicycle, which charges from your car (both 12V or the 120V if you have that option in your car/suv).

It weighs in at only 30lbs, and can assist you reaching speeds of up to 28km without you peddling – faster speeds as possible if you use the pedals!

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Now let us suppose you’re fortunate enough (I’m being positive here) – to have parking at the office. Don’t you just love to park your car? Well if you’re someone who doesn’t like to park, either Parallel Parking, or Perpendicular Parking – the Active Park Assist has a mode to help you!

We were fortunate enough to have 3 different driving demonstrations (and you could opt to be a passenger, or to drive the vehicle – and both Dianne and I did both.

 

The three practical demonstrations were

1. Active Park Assist – Parallel Parking
2. Active Park Assist – Perpendicular Parking
3. Pro Trailer Backup Assist

All of these technologies are options available with their Sync Gen 3 – and available shortly (now or within a month) – in 2016 models hitting the dealerships starting now

Active Park Assist – Parallel Parking
While I have to say that the experience of a car parking itself is “odd” – it was also very cool.

The Ford Fusion left a VERY nice impression – rear legroom was ample – and when I got to demo the parking system, it was very nice.  The parallel parking solution feels a little peculiar to have the wheel spinning and parking the car without me doing much at all – I have to say, that the car did a top-job at parking only my assistance in braking involved.

So how does it work?

First you slow down before the parking spot – and you put your blinker on – if parking on the left, the left blinker – and if parking on the right, using the right blinker.  You then press the parking button.  Drive past the parking spot and the car notices if the spot is big enough for the car.  If the spot is too tight, or simply not large enough, the system will not indicate that it has found a suitable spot.  If you like the spot, drive past the spot parallel to the car in front.  The car indicates for you to stop.  So stop!!

Now comes the ‘leap of faith’ – take your hands off the steering wheel – and put the car into reverse.  If you take your foot off the brake (which you can – make sure you are ready to stop the car when you’re in the spot, because the car does NOT brake for you.

Now the car takes over – it reverses and parks you seamlessly.  The demo we did used quite a large parking spot – and a single parking maneuver was all that was required.  We apply the brake + put the car into park.  If you touch the steering wheel, the system aborts the parking and you’re back in control.

At all times you have the brake to stop you – and you must… remember – the car will NOT brake for you!!!

 

Active Park Assist – Perpendicular Parking

Automatic Perpendicular parking is very odd – I couldn’t imagine ever needing that help, but the project manager for global projects who was in the car demoing it explained that if we imagined the car doing the parking in a crowded + tight parking spot, it would do the job faster + more efficiently than I could… I could maybe imagine this – as I’m a careful + slow parker.  I prefer to take it steady.  The car can definitely park faster than me.  While I’m sure I would get used to it – the first time we tried this, I was pretty freaked out at the parking speed… it seems so fast!!

Pro Trailer Backup Assist

The shining example of this new Ford technology was their trailer backup system (in my opinion).

We had a brand spanking new F150 Sport with the towing package, which includes this amazing system to back up your trailer.. and all for less than a grand… I was blown away – and here is why…

If any of you have backed up trailers, you’ll know that it can be a pain to get a trailer to go where you want it to go.  I don’t move a trailer often, although I used to.  I remember practicing for hours on the family farm with a landrover + small trailer.  I got pretty good at it, but that’s 3 decades ago and a skill I have not used in forever.   We had a trailer + a seaDoo on the back.  The task was to back the trailer up around a 90 degree bend and park it between some cones.  Sounds easy right?

Wrong – unless you are well practiced in backing up a trailer, a short trailer is a pain to back up!

To begin, they showed us just backing it up without turning at all – the system took over and we went backwards in a perfectly straight line – the steering wheel spinning back + forth and keeping up PERFECTLY straight.  I was impressed.

Now to 90-degree it between the cones.. ok… impress me some more…

and it did.

Now, instead of using the steering wheel – we grab a knob on the dash and use that to tell the truck where the trailer must go.  Turn to the right, and the truck makes the trailer go right – the same for left obviously.

So – I let this truck spin the steering wheel in each direction and I just gave it a little pressure on the gas pedal, and turned this little knob.  The truck did amazing things and I put the seaDoo trailer into the cone ‘parking spot’ at the first attempt.  It was AMAZING – SERIOUSLY AMAZING!! 

So how does it work?  It’s magic – but you have some work to do when you get your trailer.  You take measurements of the wheel-base, the total length of trailer, hitch to wheels etc – and you mount a sticker onto the trailer.  The truck scans for the sticker when you activate the system.  If you have multiple trailers, you select the trailer you have on the back from the list of pre-programmed trailers.  As you back up, if you selected the wrong trailer, then the sticker won’t move as the system expects it to move – and it will abort the assist (you’re on your own) – but assuming you measure + told the truck you had the right trailer on the hitch, then the truck knows where the sticker will go based on it’s movements of the steering wheel and it does a fantastic job of putting the trailer where you tell it to put it… just don’t watch the steering wheel – it will make you dizzy!!

#FordSmartTechnology