Young people aren’t the only ones who are starting to think in new ways about car ownership and how they get around. According to Ken Washington, VP of research and advanced engineering at Ford, “the population boom that is happening in mega-cities is leading us to think about mobility differently.” Moving from point A to point B depends increasingly on context, Washington explained during a Techonomy 2014 discussion entitled “Man, Machine, and How the Future Works.” The trip no longer necessarily happens in a privately owned car. It could instead include any combination of public transportation, bicycle, or car-sharing service. Washington said that Ford is doing “a number of mobility experiments to help us understand these modalities … so that we can deploy solutions” for getting customers from point A to point B “regardless of whether they have a car or not.” What is Ford doing to help make sure that the automobile will remain an integral part of a broader system of mobility solutions? “Autonomous capabilities, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity … these technologies are all weaving together into an inflection point,” said Washington, that will give drivers a richer, safer experience and “a totally different set of options for how you’re mobile in an environment.”