I'm Michael Gale, your host for today's edition of Futures in Focus from Forbes Insights. I'm the co-author of the Wall Street Journal and Amazon best-selling book on digital transformation titled The Digital Helix. This is a podcast focused on interviewing visionaries and leaders with their insights and ideas about the world 10 years from now or what the world 10 years from now might be like in terms of what we're doing for work, what technologies we will be using and won't be using by then, and how our world might be organized differently, and even what we might be eating, wearing, and doing for fun.

Welcome to this week's edition of Forbes' Futures in Focus. I'm your host Michael Gale. And I'm really excited to have a guest here today, who's going to talk about the future of democratizing transport. Matt Jones is the Director of Technology Strategy at Ford Motor Company. He's also actually as importantly President of COVESA, which is the Connected Vehicle Alliance, that brings together some of the best thinking in the industry across the globe about what a future connected vehicular and transportation experience looks like. Matt, thank you for joining us today.

Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Michael.

Good. Let me set this up in an odd way. Look, we have as a premise for the podcast that less than 9% of us actually think about the world of 2032 in 2022. But 95% of us plus are going to live here. And we're also living right now in the most remarkable reinvention of the transportation industry. You were actually involved in the innovation area and actually creation of a Hyperloop, which we're going to talk about today. But whether or not it's EVs, or having pizzas delivered by autonomous vehicles, or in a completely different ideas of what transportation is, we're entering a revolution.

And one of the things that is always concerning in a revolution is that everybody equally benefits from the upside because nobody would argue by the time 2032 rolls around that people should have unequal opportunities in transportation. So we're going to talk about those that don't have credit cards, those that maybe have physical disabilities, and how really this is a moment to equal that level playing field between everybody. Does that make sense?

100%.

So look, let's talk about why mobility matters when we're thinking about 2032 and why it matters in a different way. Talk to us.

I often bring this back to, why do we have mobility at all? Why do we have cars on the road? Why do we have public transportation networks? And I can remember when I was sat there. And I got a call one day. I was in Portland, working for a company called Moovel. That was a Daimler subsidiary, really focused on the next generation of mobility. How will you stitch together trucks and buses and cars and all of these different systems?

And I got a call from somebody that said, you should contemplate coming to work for a Hyperloop. And they explain the system and all the technological jargon about how cool it would be to have an autonomous vehicle at 750 miles an hour in a vacuum tube. And then they said, can you imagine a time when you could travel from Sacramento to San Francisco in 12 minutes?

And that really attracted my attention. Not because it's 12 minutes, but think about what that would do. Think about all of the people that, for one reason or another, can't live on the Peninsula in the Bay Area. Think about how it would enable the interactions by literally millions more people if you could get from the center of San Francisco to Sacramento. Literally, you could live in Sacramento with Sacramento house prices and be at a bank, be anywhere, up and down that entire Bay Area and down the Peninsula in a matter of minutes.

And then it started me thinking as well as we got talking, can you imagine a time where you could live in LA and go to college in Vegas, 28 minutes away? And what that could really do? I must admit I was very much attracted to it for the technology, but also the idea that actually mobility is not just about the forms of transportation we use. But it's in some ways about how you can afford to be near or live near some of what you need to do to get on in your career, get on in your life. I felt that Hyperloop would help with that.

But going back to kind of this vision of 2032, it also made it really clear. Can you imagine a time where maybe you're at the Staples Center in LA, and you want to go to the convention center in Vegas? You could be there in 28 minutes. And you could ship 100,000 people an hour over that route.

But then I started thinking, how do you move on 100,000 people who just arrive? Literally, thousands and thousands of people every minute, just spooling out from these Hyperloop networks. And what do they do for their last mile? And how do you clear them out of the way? And very quickly, it became clear that you couldn't just have people walking down the steps of the Hyperloop portal, what they call a station, and waiting on the sidewalk for an Uber. Or thinking about putting their hand out for a taxi. Or God forbid, grabbing an electric scooter and figuring out how they were going to get to--

100,000 people on electric scooters will be really scary. Right?

That's right. And very quickly, it became the case that actually the challenges that we have ahead of us in the next 10 years. It's more than just what the next car looks like. It's more than just how can we get more people to ride buses or more people to cycle. It's really about this connected transportation. And we're seeing some of that today with what Google are doing with the updates to their mapping system and how you can find it.

But even at that point, you have this connected transportation network potentially where you could order an Uber to take you to the train, to get the train, to take another Uber at the other end. But that's still not quite enough. As you said in the intro, what do we do about the 71 million, potentially Americans, who have some sort of disability? What do we do when 25% of the people in the US are underbanked? They haven't got credit cards. Some of them don't have bank accounts. And how do we help the four million plus visually impaired, significantly visually impaired, that potentially can't use smartphones in the way that some people manage to do in order to plan on minute-by-minute of their transportation?

So I'm going to pause there, but I think that kind of gives a sense for some of the challenges we've got to have.

It's a beautifully articulated vision of the challenge because it's not either articulated in such crispness in four minutes or necessarily as well understood as you're illustrating to me. So look, there are some interesting choices here. One is the choice to ignore, what you said, and we just keep moving on a pathway of small or large incremental steps. And then another choice, because we're going to face this reality, is how we structurally change the way we think about connected transportation.

And because you work in an industry with very long development curves, this isn't like a piece of software you can change overnight. There's a sort of physical virtual combination. So if you were king for a day-- of course, as English people we understand that construct, right? But if you were king for a day, what would you start doing that would mean, by the time we get to 2032, you could reflect on this podcast and go, we actually got a lot of this achieved?

If I were king for a day, I actually would focus on accessibility for mobility. But I wouldn't think about this in the linear fashion that we tend to sometimes as humans. I wouldn't think that we have to do this, then that, then the other. I wouldn't serialize all these problems.

And in reality, in the same way as we've had cloud networks, really sprung up over the last 11 years because we've abstracted the problem out. We've had amazing teams of people to work on all of these different problems in parallel. Some of which have that physical element. If we went to an Amazon data center, can you imagine the hordes of engineers that they've got working out the cooling or working out how they get power to these computers?

If you went to visit Intel or Nvidia, they've got tens of thousands of engineers, all focused on how you get the computer in there. If we went to Micron or these other companies, they're looking at the memory. If we went to Microsoft or if we engage with the Linux Foundation, we look at the operating systems. And all of that comes together to enable millions of people to develop applications on top.

My mental model of mobility, it's kind of like the internet. It's kind of like this packet switch network, where at the moment, we're talking to each other on a Zoom call. And everything that I say and everything you say in response is going through all of these Cisco switches, goes through my broadband connection. It goes through my Mac. It goes through your PC. And in reality, the way people move around very similar to those IP packets.

And if I were king for a day, I'd really try and focus everybody on looking at how they can make a difference. Not solving this giant problem, but how could we get the people thinking-- how could we get Uber thinking about playing better with some of their competition? How could we get the train systems and the bus systems to interlink? Maybe from a software perspective before we even think about the hardware.

And then how could we start really getting this data back on how people are moving around cities? Where are the challenge points? Where are the hotspots? And how could we democratize that data? How can we understand some of the challenges better that the 5% of people in the US who totally rely on public transportation? What are their challenges on a day-to-day basis?

And then if I were king, I'd get every single one of those tribes out there, every single department of transport, every single mobile network operator, working on how they could make it better through, in a way, collaboration, in a way, democratizing the data, exposing the challenges. So that we can not solve one series of problems but solve all these problems as we discover them in parallel.

And going back to your point, I worked for a fantastic company. I love it. But at the same point, we do have huge, great, big vehicles, manufacturing lines. And it takes time. You can't change steel presses in the same way as they can change a line of code. But if potentially we could find those digital overlays to the physical world that we're describing in the way we move around, potentially we can have incremental improvements on the way to 2032-- and mine's 3032. And rather than focus on perfection, which we're probably not going to achieve. I'd rather have action than perfection at this point.

You're listening to Forbes Insights' Futures in Focus with your host, best-selling author, Michael Gale. Nothing is certain about the future, but you can be more prepared for it by listening to Futures in Focus. Find the show everywhere find podcasts are found. And subscribe. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Now, back to your host, Michael Gale.

As the elegance of the discussion around software is a part of something we got to cover in a second, it's the industry at all levels, not just the auto industry. But if you look at it from a perspective of freight, train, everything else, is there a general understanding that the DNA needs to evolve? Or are we still trying to fit square blocks in what are increasingly looking like round holes and hoping it works?

You see, I'm not convinced, at this point, that it's necessarily just the industries as we describe it. I think you have to start looking at the motivations in each of these different areas. If we look at the mission that a public transit agency has-- fantastic mission-- how could they be incentivized or how could they better collaborate with a rail company with private taxi services, with the electric scooters that we have at the moment, with automotive OEMs, and everybody in between?

And in some ways, it's that old adage that it's, how do we evolve the people in each of these places? So a better appreciation of the real challenges that we have. How do we evolve ways of communicating across all of these different parts of? What is one transportation network across this planet? And then how can we agree the evolutions that we're going to make? It almost seems like it's a collaboration and an appreciation of the problem, challenge before you even get to some of the technological solutions.

The organization you're president of, does it see that mantra, that idea of connecting knowledge and experience and challenges as being part of its mandate? Or is that a mandate that needs to be sort of regenerated in order to bring people together?

So COVESA is the Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance, as you say. And it is very focused about providing this open framework for people to be able to communicate their issues, share some of their solutions. And it aims to give people a higher starting point in software, in systems, in use cases, and documentation, for them to evolve their business models on top. But really, it's there as a container to allow like-minded companies, like-minded individuals within those companies to collaborate and go to that next stage.

And it's almost a safe playground for people to bounce ideas, which is what it will take to make these evolutions that we're really talking about, especially when it comes to less able-bodied people and some of the challenges, where-- how do they call an Uber if they can't use a smartphone in 10 years time, five years time when we have an autonomous vehicle? What does it mean when the autonomous vehicle pulls up and they can't step down off a curb? Or they can't lift their own bag into the trunk of that autonomous vehicle? So all of these challenges, they're really need to be aligned.

I mean, the aim of COVESA is to think about existing cars, the existing forms of transportation we have today. But then work with the mobile network operators, the Verizons, the Vodafones of the world. How can they play a part, actually, the connectivity in this future world we will live in? Is it going to be as critical in mobility as anything else?

How can we imagine a time where even if there's only cars on the road that a Ford and a GM could communicate seamlessly without the aid of anybody else? How can they communicate in a common language? There's all of these different issues that we need, which are almost service layers, they're almost hygiene functions that you just couldn't live without. But they are essential for us to deliver sooner rather than later because that's what the application developers, that's what the people that will actually solve some of these challenges we're talking about in an undemocratized world will solve.

It's interesting on two dynamics on this because there's an awful amount I've learned, I think. One is that there's this catalyst of change, which is the sort of software-led future. But the element for change has to go all around that is a fundamental desire to collaborate, to win, not just to create, to try, and have small victories in tiny worlds. Because a world where you and I could say, we know 100% that someone who's underbanked, someone with a physical disability has as much transportation opportunity without a premium across all the various forms of public or private transportation, that to me is a huge societal win. You get that done, there's a lot that can happen when you can make that happen.

That's right. And still, if I think about this, we achieve this goal that we're talking about, where underbanked individuals, less able-bodied individuals, able to get from A to B easier than ever before. It's opening up so many possibilities in their life.

But the thing that it doesn't do, it doesn't close down differentiation on any of those forms of transportation. It doesn't close down any business models. It doesn't close down innovation that you can do on top of that. If anything, it's opening up this entire market as well as opening up the economy that potentially is surrounding it.

You're listening to Forbes Insights' Futures in Focus with your host, best-selling author, Michael Gale. Nothing is certain about the future but you can be more prepared for it by listening to Futures in Focus. Find the show everywhere find podcasts are found. And subscribe. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Now back to the interview.

Let's see if the auto industry-- not the auto industry. I apologize. If the transportation industry-- auto, air, all various forms of service transport-- is 100 units now, if they were to adopt and apply this mission shift, vision shift, and sight shift, how much bigger could the industries collectively be? If today's an index of 100, what could it be by 2032?

Well, let's just think of it-- less so, we're giving you a straight answer. But think of that 15% of people don't have a smartphone today. 13% don't have access to a vehicle. On top of that, let's think of something else. The number of people-- New York is a good one. 47% of people who live in New York, New York City's buildings, they're inaccessible for disabled people. So even if you did have some of these transportation things, how do they get around the cities?

So what we're saying is that there's this stack of percentages on top of your 100, that we're living in now that we could open up before we even consider the network effect. And that's just in the US. If we think of that 15% of people don't have access to a smartphone in the US. What might that be in Europe? Or Asia? Or Africa? Or South America? All of these different territories.

Because this isn't a challenge that I have in Portland. It's not a challenge that you have in Seattle. This is a worldwide challenge. And it's about a mobility network that involves more than just ground-based transportation potentially in the future. It's only when we start to stack all of those together do we really get the extent.

And then as you implied earlier, we're talking a lot about people. It's important. But think about transportation for goods. How could we better utilize our existing transportation networks to get higher throughput? We're reading a lot of the moments about the challenges that we have. Could all of that be linked into one? At which point your stack of percentages just goes through the roof?

Yeah. It really does because fundamentally, the network and the multiplier effects are enormous. So this is a fantastic conversation because it actually sparks us to want to do things differently. As citizens, what do we need to do? And as leaders of industry that listen to this, what are they need to do differently? Pitch them right now and say, OK, as of tomorrow morning, this is what you need to do to make this happen.

So let's start on the industry side. If you're in a position, and I think about this every day, as my role at COVESA, my day job at Ford Motor Company, it's like, how can I make a difference? Not on what my output is, but how can I encourage everybody that I interact with, not just in my organization but elsewhere, to collaborate? So that we can have a starting point that we can develop truly innovative intellectual property that solves these problems on a faster rate all the time.

If we relate that to IT, Linux is out there, Microsoft is out there. Not every company needs to write an operating system. It doesn't add any value. We write applications on top. What's the equivalent that we can do for mobility? How can we encourage people to go find the highest starting point that's out there and build on top of it? And then when they're doing that, work out what they can share to help other people create solutions surrounding it, which will make all of this network, of this mobility network better than ever before.

So it's kind of a case of you, as an individual, how do you lead the team? How do you portray the vision? How do you encourage your team to focus totally on solving these pain points, adding the capabilities that we need for these mobility networks? And how do you encourage everybody in your team to do the same?

And in reality, if we translate that into to me, to you, to everybody in their private lives, I think it's a case of highlighting the challenges that some of my friends have and some of my friends in Detroit. One in particular, she has this same challenge, and we've spent a long time discussing how-- actually, she can't live a college at this point in time because the transportation from her dorm to the classroom is more painful than her living 20 miles away and relying on her family to drive each way.

How can we think about some of those pain points that we might be exposed to on a day-to-day basis? And what can we do to highlight those? But having the open discussion is normally a fantastic start.

Fantastic statement about a very personal story. And Amazon always just had the idea that we live in a world of 7 and 1/2 or 7.7 billion markets. What you're really saying is from a transportation standpoint, we're very linear. But actually, every travel requirement is extremely unique. There could be billions of travel requirements. And we should try and solve all of those, not just solve the lowest common denominators, is that fair?

Absolutely. I would say, we solve the meta problems as opposed to as you put it the lowest common denominators. Sometimes, we're going to have to look at these corner cases. Do you know what, if we find the solutions to these corner cases, for these amazing people, we'll be a better society for it.

Matt, I could ask nothing better than to finish this off with, look, everybody's going to want to connect with you. What's the right way of people getting to you to talk about this going forward?

So I'd love people to, especially in the industry, especially related to the technology, to look at COVESA, C-O-V-E-S-A.global, as a website. And then needless to say, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm sure people will find me if they want to get in touch.

Matt, really inspiring. We're going to be running this on or around CES, where obviously the large auto show is. Hopefully, people get to listen to it. They will get to share it. And it may hopefully give people a revamped of how they think about the challenges in an industry or range of industries that go further back than 1830 because the next 10 years are going to be very different, hopefully, than the preceding 150. Thank you for joining us today on Forbes' Futures in Focus

Thanks, Michael.

You've been listening to Forbes Insights' Futures in Focus, with your host, Michael Gale. Join us next time when Michael connects with another great guest, who will peel back some of the possibilities they believe we will be experiencing 10 years from now. We'll see you next time on Forbes Insights' Futures in Focus.