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| Ford Evos Concept |
Wouldn’t your insurance company? Ford didn’t talk about this in the Ford Evos Concept rollout, but the possibility exists. If the car knows you have allergies, it would crank up the HEPA filters and even, Ford hints, might access air quality info and proactively reroute you via a cleaner route. Ford’s announcement “foresees,” for instance, custom-tuning the suspension for the road and the driver.
The Ford Evos concept car is a plug-in hybrid (like Chevrolet Volt) and Ford sees how economy and performance could be enhanced via the cloud. At a pre-pre-rollout last week in Detroit, Ford’s chief designer, J. Mays, offered two tantalizing hints about the future for Evos and Ford.
The exciting new Ford Evos Concept showcases a visionary technology experience under development by Ford engineers. Based on connectivity between the vehicle and the driver’s ‘personal cloud’ of information, the Ford vision explores how technology can help to personalize the vehicle, increase driving enjoyment, look after the driver’s well-being, and optimize powertrain performance.
“The Ford Evos Concept unites three key elements which are at the core of our One Ford global product strategy: outstanding design, smart technologies and fuel economy leadership,” said Derrick Kuzak, Group Vice President of Global Product Development.
Ford’s global Research and Innovation team, led by Paul Mascarenas, was tasked with building the Ford Evos Concept around a technology experience as visionary as the design. The concept’s technology experience embraces a new generation of driver interaction and awareness currently under development in the Ford Research and Innovation laboratories.
Think Mondeo. We will see both vehicles at the Detroit Auto Show in January, where they will be trumpeted as the acme of Ford boss Alan Mulally’s “One Ford” concept; the same basic vehicle sold all around the world.
As a result, it’s all change for Ford’s “Kinetic” design philosophy, for which Iosis was in the 2005 vanguard. The Ford Evos is a simpler, more aggressive design, with heavily sculpted panels, which might give the production boys some headaches. Ford already partners Microsoft on the development of automotive connection software, but Mascarenas is confident that any future Ford systems would be able to communicate across Android, Apple and Microsoft architecture.
The Evos’s coupe style is no coincidence, either. Ford would love to recapture the spirit and sales of the old Capri and the Evos is a nod in the direction of Europe’s best-ever selling coupe. De Ward favors a pragmatic solution to getting back to the coupe market, with four seats and four doors, citing the Mazda 323F and Alfa Romeo 156 as cars which managed to achieve a sporting profile with those practical rear doors.
