It may be over 100 years old, but the auto industry is being redrawn, recrafted and reborn before our eyes. The modern car is now the leading edge in the development of propulsion systems, globalism, environmental impact and new manufacturing techniques. And, perhaps most importantly, auto manufacturers are experimenting with new ways of combining these disciplines. Though a staunch symbol of the industrial age, the car is only just now fully discovering itself, its surroundings and its impact. It will change more over the coming decade than it has over any other 50-year period in its history.

Inspired by its own world-changing history of bringing affordable mobility to the masses, Ford is forging elaborate plans to repeat the achievement for the 21st Century. And it comes at a singular time of transformation. Ford is, on a philosophical plane, rethinking what it means to be a car company. Offering people mobility in a way they can quickly and easily use it, Ford has mapped out a smart mobility plan using smart vehicles, digital connectivity, user experience design, autonomous vehicle technology and data and analytics, all to deliver access and transportation solutions to both owners and users never before seen. Quite literally, Ford is now reinventing how we use and interact with cars.

And this all comes at a critical, pivotal moment in our history. All the population and trending data shows that if we don't deal with the various changes that urbanization is causing across the globe, we'll get stuck in gridlock like never before. The world's existing infrastructure cannot sustain the sheer numbers of vehicles expected with this economic and population growth in the coming years, and Ford's engineers have seen that we will need not only smarter cars, but smarter roads and smarter cities.

We've already seen a sea of changes in how we interact via technology and how this will impact our mobility future. And the end result is not always car ownership. There are certain locales where that's not easy, nor desirable. The end result of the Ford Smart Mobility plan is a network of mobile connectedness—not necessarily relying on car ownership, but on several mobility services when vehicles may eventually be deemed impractical.