Two years ago, Ford's captive finance company piloted a shared lease program that offered consumers, especially younger ones who didn't need a car full time, a lower lease payment by splitting the lease with other people.
Lease sharing sounded like the wave of the future. It was a hip, edgy idea that showed Ford was willing to reimagine car ownership.
But in less than a year, the pilot had closed.
All companies want to be relevant as new technology and ownership models emerge, said Sheryl Connelly, manager of global consumer trends and futuring at Ford Motor Co.
"Understanding what's happening and why it's happening and where it might be going is a useful tool for everybody," especially automakers that typically have a production schedule of three years, she said.
Everyone at auto companies, not just the futurists, must have a strategy that will meet the demands of future customers. "That's the nature of the cycle plan," she said. "The danger is if you were to follow a fad, fads come and go. They'll be obsolete by the time you are able to execute it."
Trends, with often slow-moving evolutions, Connelly said, "cause society as a whole to rethink their values."
If automakers don't want to go the way of the dinosaurs, they will need to identify and capitalize on trends in transportation, technology and retail.
But figuring out which changes are trends worth following, and which shifts are mere fads, can be expensive and time consuming. So how can companies figure it out without wasting resources? Experts say the industry needs to focus on parallel industries, tracking human behavior and investing in the change.
Pulse of behavior
Built-in child seats. "Everybody had to have a built-in child seat in the '90s," said Carla Bailo, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research. "Had we probably thought about it at the time and thought about the necessity to move children from car to car, you could see it wasn't going to be a long-lasting solution."
Automatic seat belts. In the late 1980s and early '90s, automakers equipped cars with seat belt systems that automatically belted in occupants when the vehicle door closed. They were a way for automakers to meet NHTSA standards calling for passive restraint systems before the carmakers were prepared to install airbags.
Car phones. These gained popularity in the 1980s and '90s. Even the cast of "Charlie's Angels" had used car phones in the late 1970s TV show, said Sheryl Connelly, manager of global consumer trends and futuring at Ford Motor Co. "The reality is when mobile phones started to take off, it was easier to have one phone."
Consumer GPS units. Those TomTom or Garmin devices that plugged into vehicles' accessory power outlets were great replacements for folding maps and atlases. But because nearly everyone now has a smartphone with several mapping apps, sales of consumer mapping devices have plummeted.
Human behavior often helps distinguish the new ideas that will stick from those that will fade.
Rohit Bhargava, author and founder of Non-Obvious Company, which trains businesses on innovation and strategy, pointed to one generational difference affecting business: Older generations valued material things, whereas many millennials value experiences. Now that many baby boomers are trying to downsize, many struggle to find homes for the valuables they've accumulated, he said.
"Their kids don't want their stuff," Bhargava said. "They have stuff like Lladro figurines and things that used to go in a china cabinet. People don't display their stuff in that way anymore."
Other industries have responded to this lack-of-ownership model. The shift happened about a decade ago in software, Bhargava said. Then, people would buy Microsoft Word, and end up with a stack of Word CDs on a desk. "And now you just pay a monthly fee, and you get whatever the latest version is," Bhargava said. "There are no CDs at all, and you don't really own it."
Airbnb and other short-term home rental companies have capitalized on the changing attitudes toward ownership.
"There was once a time where people would be like, 'There's no way I'm going to lend my house out to somebody else,'?" said Danny Stillion, executive design director at IDEO, a global design company headquartered in San Francisco. "What we have seen a couple of years ago with these probes has been helpful for traditional automotive companies to learn what it takes to develop an infrastructure to support a service model like that."
In the auto industry, now with ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, and subscription services such as Clutch, Flexdrive and automaker programs, the way consumers have bought products and services "is getting completely disrupted," Bhargava said.
Watching data
Data can tell a story about how behavior is changing, and plays a critical role as companies strive to stay ahead of emerging trends.
Stillion studies early adopters of new technology and disinterested consumers. The early adopters, he said, "want the latest technology. We're countering that with folks that might be almost considered Luddites or they're technophobes or they're traditionalists."
Between those groups, there's typically a bell curve, "where the bulk of the market is going to be heading in terms of balancing progressive innovation vs. what's known to users and consumers," he said.
IDEO uses that information, along with examples from similar industries, to "not so much predict the future but see where people might be aspiring toward a preferred future together based on where technology is going and what their needs are," Stillion said.
But sorting out the trends from the fads is still a guessing game, one that takes constant monitoring.
In July 2017, Pon Holdings, a Dutch transportation and mobility company and luxury brand distributor in the Netherlands, invested in IndiGO Auto Group, which has luxury dealerships in Houston, St. Louis, Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs, Calif.
Pon is trying to figure out how the automotive business is transforming into the mobility business, IndiGO CEO Todd Blue said. Pon wants to give its IndiGO dealerships enough capital to support the transformation to mobility providers, he said.
But that means IndiGO's leadership team has at least weekly conversations with Pon to discuss their vision for the future.
"If you're not talking about it weekly, this is going to pass you by," Blue said. But ensuring that new ideas are lasting also takes capital, he added.
A sure way to tell if companies are planning for the future? Adequate funding, Blue said.
"It cannot be a smoke and mirrors company," he said. "It has to be a business model that's profitable."
Failed pilot
Through Ford Credit Link, the pilot at three Austin, Texas, dealerships let three to six customers sharing a lease schedule their driving time and divide payments any way they liked.
Still, participation in the program suffered as consumers struggled to find people to share a lease with and feared joint liability. The program started in March 2016 and Ford Credit closed it by December.
Three months into the program, no one had signed up. One of the pilot dealers said his staff had no reason to suggest the program to customers; shoppers came to the dealership because they wanted to buy their own car. Another pilot dealer had faith that with more marketing, customers would show interest. In June, Ford Credit launched digital billboards in Austin to increase awareness, but it didn't work.
At the time Ford Credit Link launched, Ford Credit had a number of experiments in place, said spokeswoman Margaret Mellott.
"We knew some would work and some wouldn't," she said. Since the pilot, Ford Credit has zeroed in on other areas that hold more promise, such as Canvas, a subscription service run by Ford Credit for used vehicles, Mellott said.
Despite the failure of Ford Credit Link, auto companies should keep experimenting in order to understand what it takes to support on-demand mobility, said Stillion. It's vital that automotive companies experiment with products or services that could become trends, he said.
"I suspect you're going to see OEMs arcing toward that, as well as the Enterprise and Hertz companies of the world, extending beyond the typical business trend," he said. "How do they accommodate people's desire to have access to a car for a week or two or months on end?"
Trend awareness and analysis can help automotive companies to prepare for a somewhat uncertain future, Connelly said. "You look at trends and say, 'This one could go this way or that way. How ready are we?'"