Ford wants to tap into Silicon Valley’s vast pool of engineers

Ford has had a presence in Silicon Valley since it first opened an office there back in 2012, but now the American automaker is taking things to the next level by opening a new research and development center in Palo Alto. It will be here that Ford will tap into the Tech Mecca’s vast engineering capacity to research autonomous vehicles, connectivity, and mobility.

The research center will employ more than a hundred engineers who will be working closely with researchers from Stanford University, which is just a few miles away from where Ford’s center will be located. Neighboring the research center will be the Nest building, the headquarters for the high-profile consumer electronics company that Google acquired not too long ago. An interesting aside, Tesla’s office will be pretty close to the Ford center as well.

Automakers from across the globe have all arrived to the conclusion that they need to integrate more technology into their vehicles if they want to remain successful, and what better place for Ford to achieve this than the technology capital of the world. Silicon Valley is home to some of the world’s top engineers in the fields that are vital to the future of the automotive industry.

Dragos Maciuca, a former engineer at Apple, has been tasked by Ford with not only leading the research center, but also strengthening the automaker’s relationships with the various technology companies and universities that are nearby. This is certainly a demonstration of how seriously Ford is taking this and fits with Ford’s history of being among the first automaker’s to implement high-tech features in its vehicles, albeit with mixed success.

The problem with some of the past attempts to implement high-tech features into their vehicles is that this is simply an area that most automakers don’t have a lot of experience in. This is an issue that definitely needs to be worked out if companies like Ford want to make their vehicles smarter and more connected, and it’s nice to see that Ford understands this.

While Detroit has been one of the automotive capitals of the world for quite some time, automakers simply haven’t been able to fill the vital software-engineering positions that they have due to the fact that Detroit simply isn’t a good hub for that kind of technology. That’s why Ford’s decision to tap into Silicon Valley’s massive pool of engineers is such a smart move, and the automaker has stated that it believes this new research center “shows Ford’s commitment to be part of the Scilicon Valley innovation ecosystem.”