Carmakers are trying to reinvent themselves amid growing clamor for environmentally friendly cities not choked by exhaust pollution and traffic gridlock.

For manufacturers, the challenge means a dramatic transformation from simply welding together the means of transport to making smart, integrated mobility solutions.

In China where urbanization is occurring faster than anywhere else in the world, with a momentum to create 221 cities with populations of 1 million or more by 2025, the call for that change is even more urgent.

More than 100 years ago, Ford’s assembly lines brought down the cost of manufacturing, making cars an affordable adjunct to daily life. Today, the company aspires to improve the way the world moves about again by drawing on its mass-market brand status to make smart mobility accessible to millions.

That strategy is underscored in Ford’s 11.4 billion yuan (US$1.8 billion) investment plan for research and development in China. The company unveiled its 2020 offensive last week, with 20 new cars in the pipeline. The plans include Ford’s first-ever green cars in China and feature a higher penetration rate for its energy-efficient EcoBoost engine series.

These smart choices of eco-friendly transportation will help a Ford customer cut annual fuel consumption by 200 liters by 2020 compared to 2015, which equals to savings of 1,400 yuan a year. That would result in a combined reduction of 500 tons of carbon dioxide in China. However, Ford’s vision goes beyond even that.

“We used to make our customers the center of our innovations,” said Joseph Liu, vice president of marketing, sales and services at Ford Motor China. “Now we are shifting the focus to all consumers. What we want to offer is product experience around user needs, not necessarily after purchases occur.”

This change in service perspective comes with China’s emerging “sharing economy” concept in transportation. This concept includes things like hourly car rentals and car-pooling, which Ford has recently started to promote under a partnership with China’s leading company in that area, Dida Pinche.

“Car-pooling is developing as a social function as an attraction for users to keep sharing,” said Song Zhongjie, CEO of Dida Pinche.

Big cities are full of newcomers eager to expand their social networks but often lacking in opportunities. With a car to share, some find it a convenient way to meet people during daily commuting to work. Song said he has heard of cases where car-pooling even resulted in successful romances.

In Shanghai and Beijing last month, a three-week program called CityRide encouraged Ford car users to share their cars with up to 68 yuan of subsidies for 10 ride-shares. The program chalked up 170,000 rides and a reduction of 700 tons of carbon dioxide.

Now Ford is trying to link the mobile phone-enabled Dida Pinche app into its own in-vehicle infotainment system SYNC, which is expected to have a million users by the end of this year in China. The system is due to be upgraded to its third-generation.

The Applink technology involved invites developers to contribute car-adapted apps that will create an eco-system of services around cars. A similar open-source concept is being applied to Ford’s SDL platform, including Chinese home appliance makers like Haier and Midea, to give Ford users an energy-efficient Internet of Things at home.

As part of a joint study with the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ford’s My Energi Lifestyle experiment is coming to China to help families in Shanghai and Beijing optimize energy consumption by arranging electric car recharging and home appliance usage from a connected home perspective. In the next 10 years, with the popularization of new energy cars in China, recharging at home — after work and before sleep — will become a pressing issue for the grid’s power allocation.

My Energi Lifestyle is designed to allow energy-consuming devices to take advantage of off-peak rates, with the goal of reducing energy costs by 63 percent per household, or 9,400 yuan annually, and cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 45 percent in China.

A smart home connected with a Ford car also holds promise of great convenience because motorists will be able to remotely control home appliances on their way home. For example, an in-vehicle system can set the timing of home heating or cooling systems based on traffic conditions and even room temperature.

Ford is keen to adapt the technology to the Chinese way of life, which differs from lifestyles in other parts of the world. To do that, it needs to work with other companies, the State Grid and also community managers, said Liu.

“We want to offer a whole experience, something that goes beyond the purchase and after-sales service and maintenance of cars,” he said. “It should be a shared, long-term environmental solution.”

Commercial transportation

Volvo Group China, which specializes in commercial transportation, said it wants to help people think more seriously about the operation of buses and trucks, whose influence on road safety and logistics efficiency is much bigger than their apparently small share in China’s car sales.

With the release last week of its white paper “Toward Sustainable Cities, Potential Transport Solutions for China,” Volvo singled out several key problems to be addressed, such as poor fleet management and shortcomings in heavy-duty truck driver behavior, and made tactical suggestions on building an efficient city transpotation system.

During a panel discussion accompanying the white paper’s release, Zhai Xuehun, president of Beijing Chinaway Technologies, which monitors the operation of heavy-duty trucks for their owners, shared a shocking observation of how far truck drivers in China are willing to go to save fuel.

“They shift into neutral gear when going downhill so that they let gravity rather than the engine power the truck, despite the risk of it going out of control,” he said. “For each kilometer of coasting, they can save one yuan, which will eventually add up to a big number on long-distance hauls.”

He said such behavior can be significantly reduced if connected car technologies can keep trucking companies updated about dangerous practices.

Telematics, a wireless technology to connect cars, is Volvo’s solution. The company has put 300,000 vehicles with such connected services in operation worldwide.

The system handles remote diagnostics, fuel management and driver coaching. One of the main benefits is helping insurance and leasing companies better understand the usage and operation of vehicles for risk management.

Safety measures suggested by Volvo to big trucks running on a budget include high capacity transport, which features longer and heavier vehicle combinations, and “platooning,” another term for road trains.

Compared to the standard 60-ton combinations, a maximum 90-ton high-capacity combinations featuring improved handling and more consistent safety performance have shown fuel consumption cuts by 22 percent in experiments.

By “platooning,” heavy trucks driving in a convoy with little gaps in between can benefit from up to 20 percent fuel savings due to the reduced aerodynamic drag and avoidance of unnecessary acceleration.

They can even take the role as the lead vehicles for private cars, according to Volvo’s vision. An interesting set-up demonstrated overseas is a professional driver taking responsibility for “platooning” while following cars entering a semi-autonomous mode — “a viable solution for comfortable driving for commuters who travel long distances along major roads and highways” as the company puts it.

Sketchy laws, liability concerns and communication standards aside, Chinese drivers joining such convoys really need to get over their initial fear of big trucks.

That’s not the only sustainable transportation solution that needs greater understanding in China.

Electric road systems, which Volvo is developing in Sweden and California for trucks and city buses, facilitate time-saving charging of cars during driving — a task so far designed to be completed only in static status in China at recharging stations.

Dynamic charging, with electricity coming from above through overhead wires or from below via wireless connections or power lines built into road surfaces, opens up opportunities for electrification of heavy-duty trucks and long-distance buses that travel set routes repeatedly.

Such operational efficiency will be enhanced when the technology is applied to bus rapid transit (BRT), a surface subway that Volvo reckons will be a game changer in large cities by achieving subway speeds and capacity at only 5 percent of the cost.

With electric buses making further inroads in China as part of government-led initiatives, Volvo also suggests different tasks for different types of buses, such as fast-charging electric hybrids for longer routes, and quiet, purely electrified ones for the city center.

In Gothenburg, Sweden, where Volvo is headquartered, a project called ElectriCity now includes commerical operation of fully electric buses made by Volvo since June, with unconventional in-door stops such as inside a library.

“The buses come and go in such a quiet way that they don’t distract people from reading,” said Gregoire Blaise, president of Volvo Bus China.

Wide deployment of electric public vehicles creates a natural chance to step up noise control, a factor often overlooked in urban environmental planning. For example, garbage collection could be handled by silent refuse trucks on overnight runs.

“It’s time for people to stop questioning the environmental legitimacy of electric cars, which were once considered ‘born with sins’ because of the high emissions caused by their battery production,” said Li Lili, chief engineer of the State Grid’s power grid comprehensive development research department.

“Those energy footprints are inevitable,” he said. “Electrification is about moving the risks of pollution up along the industry chain, making it easier to contain through centralized management instead of leaving it to authorities to check on every single car running on the street.”

Is “sharing economy” a threat to the traditional car rental business?

A firm “no” from Enterprise Holdings, the world’s biggest car rental company, which operates more than 1.5 million cars and has invested in China’s eHi car rental company.

On a recent visit to China, Greg Stubblefield, chief strategy officer and executive vice president of sales and marketing at Enterprise Holdings, described the emerging pattern of peer-to-peer car sharing as a small trend that brings no big disruption to the company’s business.

“Car rental is basically about sharing,” he said. “And car sharing is really more of an automated rental system that meets the increasing need for flexibility and convenience.”

Enterprise Holdings’ strategy is three-pronged: traditional staff-helped services at outlets, semi-automated services, and wholly self-help services that allow customers to access cars and make payments via their smartphones.

The company is also studying autonomous driving, a technology it believes will significantly increase the efficiency of vehicle logistics for one-way rentals.