According to a new Ford study on car buying trends in 22 countries across Europe, drivers are increasingly opting for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The study – Ford Car Buying Trends 2015 – shows significant increases in the number of cars with technologies that help drivers to park, avoid collisions, and maintain set speeds and distances from vehicles ahead. Some of the key findings are as follows. Active Park Assist, which uses sensors and the vehicle's steering system to help drivers find a suitable space and steer in to it, was fitted in 34% Ford cars in Europe, up from 28% the previous year. In Switzerland, this was almost 72%, followed by the Netherlands (62%) and Spain (61%). Active City Stop, which can help reduce the severity of rear-end collisions by automatically braking if a driver does not react in time to slowing traffic ahead, was fitted to 13% of Fords sold in the region, up from 7% the previous year. The technology was most popular in Sweden (59%), followed by Norway (58%), and Switzerland (41%). Adaptive Cruise Control, which enables drivers to maintain a set distance from the vehicle in front even if it is travelling at a slower speed, was up from 48% to 52%. Turkey led with 86%, ahead of Finland (84%) and Sweden (80%). Lane Keeping Aid detects an unintentional lane departure and applies steering torque, alerting drivers to swerve it back. In the past year, 51% of Ford cars sold in Sweden were equipped with the technology, ahead of Norway (28%) and Switzerland (21%). Throughout Europe, the number of vehicles sold with Lane Keeping Aid rose by 20%. Last year, 78% of all Ford vehicles were equipped with SYNC systems, up 10% compared with the previous year. SYNC 2 allows drivers to talk to their car using simple, conversational language to operate phone, entertainment, climate and navigation systems, for instance bringing up a list of local restaurants by saying, "I'm hungry".
Significance: The study complements Ford's Research and Innovation Center in Silicon Valley, which is working with the global Ford team to deliver the Ford Smart Mobility plan aimed at taking the company to the next level in connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles, customer experience and big data. As an advanced engineering programme, the team is now working to make the required sensing and computing technology feasible for production and continuing testing and refinement of algorithms.
