Bill Ford: Mobility is Becoming a Human Rights Issue

Ford Motor Chairman Bill Ford opened his company's meeting of journalists and bloggers last night with an inspirational talk about Ford's evolution in recent years from a stodgy rust belt giant to a 21st century technology company. In an interview with David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, Henry Ford's great-grandson talked about his journey as he pushed Ford to embed sustainability within the company's entire operations.

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What is fascinating is how this family scion is taking his family's company back to its roots. When Henry Ford first dabbled in automobiles, his earliest models ran on diesel derived from peanut oil. Soybean-based plastic parts could be found in Ford automobiles during the 1930s, and at one point, Ford Motor's founder even pounded a bumper made out of a soybean-based resin with a sledgehammer to prove its resilience.

Like other automakers, Ford drifted away from plant-derived fuels and materials, but now the company is embracing everything from soy-based foam to fabrics made out of recycled plastic bottles. The result is a renewed company that is not just an automobile manufacturer: Ford Motor is a technology, lifestyle and mobility company. And that lifestyle, dependent on mobility includes sustainability at its core. So what happened?

Bill Ford talked about his first days with the company during the late 1980s when environmentalist just was not discussed at Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn. He realized that he did not want his company or industry to become like the tobacco companies, leaving him to have to apologize for what they did. He eventually become the first industrialist to speak at a Greenpeace conference in 2000, and noted that he was not sure who was freaked out more: him or the Greenpeace organizers.

Article continues at ENN affiliate, Triple Pundit

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