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    Ford at the 2012 Australian International Motorshow

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    The Ford stand at this years Australian International Motor show might seem quite small until you take a short walk outside. Outside you will be presented with the massive display Ford has developed this year. With a number of Ford vehicles on show as well as a “Smart Drive” experience. Lets look at the highlights of what Ford had on show.

    Ford Evos

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    Visiting the Ford Studio stand you can’t miss the Evos, a four seat sedan showing a cloud connected plug in hybrid concept. The idea behind this concept is to a provide an ever adapting hybrid drive system which adapts to driver style, the journey, location to optimise efficiency and to also adapt to future zoning that may have electric only lanes or areas. It’s all just a concept at the moment, but the style alone makes this car a must see.

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    Ford Kuga

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    The Ford Kuga adds to Fords new line up of cars for 2013, a “compact” SUV, it’s packed with a bunch of tech including, Ford Sync, hands-free automatic tailgate, Active Park Assist and a awesome new feature called Emergency Assistance. We can expect the Kuga second quarter 2013.

    Emergency assist is a new feature which you hopefully never have to experience. In the event of an accident the sync system will automatically make a call to emergency service. When an airbag deploys or the fuel cut off is activated, the system will notify you that it’s making a call to emergency services, at this point you can choose to stop it or in the event that the driver is unable to respond the car will automatically make the call.

    The call is placed over Bluetooth through your own phone and will tell the operator that you have been in an accident and give the GPS ordinance in the form of number spoken via the cars built in GPS and other sensors even when in a tunnel. Because the call is made over your mobile, there is no subscription fee for this service and in the future the car may be able to tell the operator how many air bags deployed, if the car has rolled, the type of crash and how many seat belts were clipped in as an indication to how many passengers were in the car. At this point these are ideas.

    Ford Focus with Sync

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    We’ve shown you the Focus ST and we also spoke to about Sync but now you can give the focus a try at Fords Smart drive circuit. You can see first person, Active city stop, Active parking assist and Sync. The focus is the first of Ford’s Australian vehicles to come with Sync, so far the feed back is strong and with ten thousand command options in nineteen different languages world wide the system gives the driver an excellent interconnectivity and because the system is software based when you bring your car in for a service the system can be updated.

    Going forward every new ford vehicle will have have sync including the Kuga, the new Fiesta which we’ll see July-August 2013 and later the Mondeo.

    Ford Mondeo

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    Ford gave us a taste of what to expect from the Ford Mondeo in Australia, while we couldn’t peep inside, the outside was more than enough. With an Aston Martin like grill and stunning exterior design, this looks to be a very popular car. It’s not meant to compete with the Falcon as it’s a smaller sedan but I know what I would choose. One of the great new features is that it has LED lights for low-beam, high-beam and signal lighting. These headlights will adapt beam projection to vehicle speed and will turn with steering.

    Ford Ranger

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    As part of the outdoor display Ford is showing of the hill climb features of the Ford Ranger. If you think you can handle it, you are taken up a steep incline then back down again. It’s so steep that I had to brace myself with the seat in front of me, it really is quite impressive and worth a go.

    With the car market changing rapidly its great to see how manufacturers are adapting to world wide markets. Ford seems to have the right idea go forward and with concepts like the Evos it’s exciting to see what the future will bring us.

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