Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is in full swing this week and while it is packed to the brim with black-suited, white-collared Google types, there have been some jaw-dropping announcements made by some of the biggest players in the market.
First off and most exciting for the petrol head within you is news that the eternal battle between bikes and cars may be at an end. Well at least a truce is being brokered.
Ford are putting all their Focus (get it?) at MWC 2015 on Smart Mobility, and understanding and better catering to the bike and car relationship.
Smart Mobility is being spear-headed by the Info Cycle experiment app and the MoDe:Pro e-bike which looks like something out of a Crossfit infomercial and behaves more intelligently than Richard Hawkins on Who wants to be a millionaire.
The MoDe:Pro e-bike features a sensor box on the frame which is retro-fittable to all bikes and has an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a humidity, cadence and light sensor. This box gathers data such as wheel speed, acceleration, weather and altitude.
With this data, Ford hopes to gain a better understanding of the bike market and how it relates to the car market. The end goal being to bring alternative modes of mobility to the masses, something particularly relevant to South Africa where owning a car is an expensive endeavour.
Ford even have a similar solution for the small to medium business which involves a Transit van and a bike rack that reminds me of that scene from District 9. So much of awesome.
Obviously there’s a waiting period for this sort of thing to become live, let alone arrive in South Africa, but it’s a decent look into what one of the major car manufacturers in the world is thinking about our growing population and the fact that we all hate traffic.
Tomorrow I’ll be posting a full interview with Ford’s research and dev peeps who answer a lot of questions about this Smart Mobility as well as shedding some light on electric vehicles, their autonomous vehicles of the future and some mind-bending Africa-related projects that will see all Saffas owning their own car…at least sort of.
