Ford invests in car tech to boost automotive sales in China

In order to combat slowing automotive sales in China, Ford has announced today that it’s investing $1.8 billion (that’s 11.4 billion yuan) to bring a new generation of smart cars into the country. The money will go toward developing technologies such as smartphone connectivity, self-driving vehicles and enhancing in-car mobile chat functions, which should prove especially useful in China’s notoriously congested traffic. Ford has already been investing heavily in the car tech space stateside, so it’s looking to transfer some of that knowhow to its Chinese market in order to stand out in the crowded automotive space.

The company’s already working on introducing its new in-car infotainment Sync 3 system in the next year, and it plans to roll out a couple of fuel-efficient vehicles — the Ford C-MAX plug-in hybrid and the Ford Mondeo hybrid — to address China’s pollution issues. The investment in China here makes sense, as the potential for the Chinese market is huge. Still, Ford has a challenge ahead, as new car sales in the Asian nation have fallen as much as 3.4 percent to around 1.42 million vehicles in August this year.

[Image credit: Jim West/Alamy]

Source: WSJ