Bill Ford's vision of the car 25 years from now

In the next 25 years, what it means to build, own, or simply drive a car will have fundamentally changed. This will become a matter of necessity and the result of innovation.

When Henry Ford founded the company bearing his name in 1903, he saw the car as a means of providing freedom of mobility to people around the world. But over a hundred years later, a number of emerging trends threaten that promise of freedom.

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We already see it happening. Long commutes and traffic jams once associated with older, established cities such as London, New York or Tokyo are spreading throughout the world's emerging economies. What became known as the "longest traffic jam ever" — a nearly two-week, 60-plus mile gridlock — took place a few years ago, not in a huge Western metropolis, but in the northern China province of Hebei.

As the world's population grows and prosperity expands, the number of vehicles on the road could double to two billion or more by 2050. At the same time, it is expected that more than 50 percent of the world's population will be living in cities. That means more congestion, longer commutes and a growing thirst for fuel, unless we act now.

With these trends, it is clear that our current approach to transportation is not sustainable. What is required is an approach that sees the car not as an individual vehicle, but as part of a broader transportation network. Cars in the future must become smarter and fully integrated into the transportation ecosystem.

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Cars will talk to each other and the world around them to make driving both safer and more efficient. "Vehicle-to-vehicle" and "vehicle-to-infrastructure" connectivity will become commonplace. Manufacturers will collaborate with traffic experts and city planners so that real-time vehicle data can improve the entire transportation network by managing energy consumption and identify and solving issues as they are developing.