triple a credit rating. i will focus on those things that got us this far. economic development, striving for excellence in education and making sure we are delivering good government at a taxpayer value. >> thank you. >> live now to the executive chair of the ford motor company, he is here in washington to talk about the future of the transportation industry, bill ford will be interviewed by david, live in c-span2. >> and then became the ceo in 2003 which he did until 2006, he is currently the executive chairman of ford. ford is a company that his great grandfather henry ford started in 1903 and has a market value of roughly $49 billion and revenue last year 199,000 employees and net income last year $7.2 billion. bill is active not only in helps to run ford, but also in activities in detroit area. he's a hockey player and a black belt in marshall arts -- martial arts and he has been active to reinvent and renovate detroit and try today make it a much more habitable place and active in many activities in the detroit area. very impressive. >> are we finished now? that was great. thank you. >> so when you were growing up, did you think the ford name was a plus or a minus because -- >> certainly both. i never wanted it to define me but i am proud of. it's interesting for me academics and sports are very important because they were great equalizers, nobody cared what your last name was. so that's why both areas for me very important because you actually got honest feedback. so when when you went to princeton and people say are you related to the company? >> depends who was asking. [laughter] >> sometimes i would say, boy, that's a common last name. >> what did you say? >> whatever it took. [laughter] >> so you played sports at princeton. >> rugby, yes. >> after you graduated in 1979 you went back to the company, went to the company, something you had to do or you didn't have to do that? >> it's funny. no is the short answer but the company was in one of its all too many downturns and i thought that things were looking pretty grim and i had this naive notion that i needed to go back and help if i could but i had interviewed for other jobs elsewhere and -- but you know, i went back. i remember my dad saying to me don't do this if your heart is not in it because you would be lousy at it and you won't do yourself and the company any favors. >> so to put in context henry ford had one son? >> one son, yeah. >> edsel ford had henry ford and your father william clay ford. >> and then another son and daughter. >> your father was in the company for many years but your uncle it was ceo for a number of years? >> right. >> after at ford for a while, you decide to get a master's degree but you went the sloan school which is named after the head of general motors. [laughter] >> yes. >> so people point that out because that was unusual? >> that was pointed out all of the time. i had a separate bathroom, by the way. [laughter] >> after you went to -- you graduated from there, you went back to ford and you rose various positions, but was it obvious to you that you would rise up to the top? >> no, i thought i could do it. there were no guaranties, there were many people there who wanted me to succeed, there were many there that didn't want the family to succeed and the notion that my values didn't always align with the top management's values so i went through this whole period whether or not this is the right place for me to try and leave my mark in the world. >> your value is being proenvironment. >> yeah. >> you thought combustion engines were right for that? >> i got to college and realized that there was a school of thought that the auto industry, industry in general but also autos were not necessarily such a great thing and really opened my eyes, wow, we have to change if we are going to get this next generation of the best and the brightest because if we don't any company only as good as its people. >> did everybody agree with you there or not? >> no, in fact, i was told to stop very clearly stop associating with environmentalists, of course, i didn't because i felt -- you remember back to those days, that was the era where people were plugging up discharge pipes, they were picketing, it was a very kind of, turbulant time. the original? >> had four children. how many cousins came out of this ford -- >> i have -- there are 13 of us in my generation. >> 13. was it obvious that you would be the one running the company? >> probably not. i'm 12th out of 13 in age and maybe overlooked and maybe to my advantage. >> when you were the ceo of a company, you began to do something that people said was dangerous, you borrowed $23 billion, why did you do that? >> well -- i want to say a word about dick who is here today. his leadership was so invaluable to get us through the darkest period in auto history and ford history. our two competitors went bankrupt and we didn't. i will always believe because of leadership we had on the board. [applause] >> i should put it in context better. right before great recession happened, you thought something bad would happen and you decide today borrow money? >> yeah. a couple of things happened. one, i went to my board, i was chairman, i was ceo, i was president and i was coo and i went to my board and said, look, , tough times are coming and i need help. what do you need, do you need a ceo or coo? i don't care, wife to get the right person. we also had to borrow a lot of money because restructuring is expensive, as you know. we hired alan who turned out to be a terrific ceo. we borrowed all of this money and we went to work and thankfully it did work. >> when the great recession happened, ultimately your two major competitors were bailed out by the u.s. government. >> right. >> did it piss you off that they were bailed out and you didn't have to be bailed out? >> in a certainly level, yes, of course. we were in a very odd position of having to support our biggest competitors. why? because the entire industrial supply base in the country was under tremendous stress and if particularly if general motors had gone under it would have taken under a number of suppliers and probably would have dragged us down and a number of other industrial companies. so we were in this very odd position having to advocate for the bailout of our competitors. >> so you have shareholders you have to deal with who are worried about the company's future and also the family. they present 40% of the voting of ford. did the family say, you're not doing a good job, forget what the shareholders think, the family wants you to do x, y and z in -- >> as part of collateral that was -- >> what was the reaction? >> silent. [laughter] >> but one of the things that, you know, alan and i talked about was the importance of having the family united behind us so that the management team and the board of directors never felt dye -- distracted to i wonder who the family is really up to. they all hung together and said we believe in you, we believe in the plan, go do it. >> in the 1960's and 70's when car manufacturing dominated the car sales in the united states, people said that the automobile companies in the united states got fat and happy and they weren't prepared by the japanese cars. the quality of cars produced by japanese and german manufacturers were better, do you think that was a fair analysis and do you think it's fair today that they're better or they're not any better? >> no, not today. back then, absolutely it was a fair analysis. we had gotten as you suggest sort of fat and happy as an industry and, yeah, there were some tough lessons learned in the 70's, 80's and 90's. today you are unionized as the other major american manufacturers, but the companies from japan or germany when they produce cars here they're not typically unionized, is that an advantage or disadvantage for you? >> it's not a disadvantage. people have very strong opinions about unions one way or the other. we have a great relationship with our union, maybe it's because our union has one industry that they support, it's the auto industry. our success is their success. people forget that during the dark times our union leadership was fantastic. they actually took all the healthcare obligations off our balance sheet and put it on theirs. so, you know, at our darkest moment, you know, i sat down with the head of the united auto workers and said, can you help, he said, absolutely. for him that's a tough sell to his membership, and so ron was -- is his name and i will never forget what he did for us. >> do you ever say you will help him by getting other people to be unionized? >> you have to be careful about that. there's some laws about that, but -- [laughter] >> but we are -- we have a great relationship with our union. >> so 199,000 employees. how many of them are blue collar and how many white collar? >> the majority are blue collar. >> how many in the united states? >> about half in terms of sales. half u.s. and half international. >> recently you announced that you were building a new facility in méxico and somebody mentioned -- >> you heard that, really? >> i did. [laughter] >> somebody running for president mentioned that that was not an appropriate thing. do you have a response to that? >> yes, i have. [laughter] >> and i think, you know, i would like to think ford is everything that should be celebrated by what's right with the country and let me explain why. we didn't go bankrupt, we paid back our loans, we did it the old-fashion way and pulled ourself by the bootstraps and we have hired 26,000 people in the united states since 2011, once we got back on our feet, we've made $12 billion investment in the united states since then and we are the largest car and truck company in the united states making cars here. we are not the largest car and truck company but we make proportion number in the u.s. and the last announcement where we are building a plant in méxico and moving small cars there. we are not losing any jobs in michigan because we are putting new vehicles into those plants. so, you know, the -- that's what's so just rating and at certainly point infuriating because i feel like we've not only invested heavily in this country and are adding lots of new jobs in this country, but you know, i think he and others should look at us and say, that's how you do business. you pay back your loans and you hire people and you invest and you invested -- and you invest -- [applause] >> and did you have a chance to explain it to him directly? >> i have. >> and did he change his mind? >> well, i -- you know, i had a very good meeting with him . he was a very good listener. he know it is facts but who knows what the campaign trail is all about. i certainly don't. >> let's talk about cars for a moment. when you -- when you manufacture cars you sell them to dealers, is it like a consignment, they sell them back to you if they can't sell them? >> no, they take them if they can't sell them. >> is that a real sticker price -- [laughter] >> is that where you start negotiating from because everybody feels like the sticker you should have to negotiate, do people still do that? >> it various dealer by dealer and dealers are independent business people, we don't control dealers, what they do is the -- the practice are varied across dealerships. >> if they say to you, make the cars of a certain type, how long does it take to produce a car red with certain types of -- >> like this one over here? >> yes. by the way, you look good in that. >> but what's the sticker? [laughter] >> it doesn't have a sticker there. when you drive a car i presume a ford product, yes. [laughter] >> fair statement. >> do you test the new models? >> i do. i drive all competitive stuff too. i had to be careful because i would bring him home and tell them i couldn't park in driveway. i do, i drive everything. >> and so what's the best value for money? let's suppose i wanted to buy a car today and i was the best value for money of a ford product. what would you recommend that i buy? let's say i have 25,000, can i get anything for 25,000? >> of course, you could. it's completely dependent upon what people and lifestyle they have and what they need. it's like asking what's your favorite child. that's a tough one to answer. >> so speaking of your children, you four children. >> i do. >> are they allowed to drive nonford cars? >> they would be disowned. >> when you're driving around michigan and let's say you need gasoline, do you go in and pump the gas yourself or people stair at you, they know who you are? >> they do. >> i have lived in the area my whole life. my kids played sports with all the kids. i live a protoy low-key lifestyle and i love the fact that i go and hang out with everybody. >> ford is a manufacturer of software but now you try to move into the software area. you have said phrase. >> if you can bare with me for just a second. the way people were looking at the world was just wrong. they were looking at a world of 7 billion people going to 9 billion people in the planet, rising gdp's around the world, growing middle classes particularly places like india and china and this is fantastic and we can sell x number of cars and truck. where are they going to go? we have gridlock and the notion that we can star jamming ever more cars and trucks in the cities makes no sense to me. we have to have a completely new approach to what it means to move people in goods and health care around city centers and so that really embarked us upon this journey of solving gridlock in cities. but then you expand it beyond cities and say there are mobility issues everywhere. for instance, 800 million people in the world without access to health care. well, what if mobility then can provide that? one example we have is we have a pilot in india where we are using our vehicles to go out to rural villages where there are no doctors and we use our connected vehicle to transmit expectant mother's health and transmit it back and if we need to deliver medicine, we can do that too. the whole notion of mobility, more people are focused on cities and that's right, there's also a poverty element to it. harvard did a study that said that the number one cause of poverty is people not being able to get to where work is. what if we can enable mobility so that people can move freely around particularly around cities and then, you know, that will be a great thing. so the smart mobility notion is us and not just us but us and others trying to figure out how do we -- how do we move people, how do we move food and how do we move health care in an ever-more-crowded world. .. the its fiction. it is coming. it is actually quite fascinating. the first time you get in one you quickly realize it it is interesting there will be no steering is some ethical questions and we come easy comparison is who does the card shoes, grandmother or baby. but then it goes beyond that. the car would take you out because what if the car could intercept a runaway but they might be hitting 10 pedestrians. or society, it may be best to say they kill you. so those are the kind of ethical questions that we've never had to face before and no one company is going to solve that. and we have to have -- could you imagine if we have one algorithm and toyota had another you obviously couldn't do that. we need to have a national discussion on ethics i think because we've never had to think of these things before. cars will have the time and ability to do that. >> they will operate on some type of mechanism that could be attacked by a cyberterrorists. >> cybersecurity becomes a big deal for this. >> there are some companies that say we will rent cars for a couple hours. most people don't drive their cars all day. but won't that mean fewer people are going to buy cars and you will sell us cars? >> in this world that is going to happen potentially anyway. there's lots of revenue stream that could be a new business model that will come up around mobility and transportation. and yet the traditional old model may or may not have peace, that there are all these revenue streams. if we do it correct way, and we can be less capital intensive, higher intensive, higher margin, less cyclical if we participate in a number of revenue streams along the way and not just sell the car and be done with a wash your hands. having said that, we are going to live in both worlds for some time because the world we are talking about now won't happen overnight and it won't happen all at once. we are going to have to straddle both worlds, making cars and trucks for quite a while and yet we are going to have to also be building this business, working with cities and that is what is really exciting. the notion of having a city as customer and rather than us go to the cities and say here's all this great technology. hope you like it. actually go to them and listen and say what are your problems? tell us what you us what u.s.a. city are facing and let's figure out to gather some solutions. >> you work for software companies to develop the software. is that a company which makes more software than hardware? >> it will do a couple things. the other thing i still see many more partnerships between us and other kinds of companies. i serve on the board of ebay for 11 years and the term frenemies was used out there. your enemies today and you work on a project together tomorrow. we are going to be doing a lot more alliances, about for collaboration with companies and we may compete against them in another area. >> when you decided you wanted to join, what if they say about that? >> we've been keeping with my environmental view. think back, this is 14 years ago. they said we think it would be good if he joined the board and they were thinking i would join a big industrial company. starbucks and ebay and they said why. starbucks to the ultimate commodity which you could buy at a gas station for 25 cents a cup and they turned it into the ultimate consumer item. we have the ultimate consumer item. so that was interesting to me. ebay was interesting because the idea he would do business with someone you'll never meet a cross borders and across the world and trust that person was to be very interesting and i might have implications going forward. i went to school with meg whitman and make said to me, i understand you are considering you have no choice you are coming to mind. i was glad i did. i loved it. it was a real go-go. but the valley was an interesting place and still is an interesting place. >> ebay sells things done by someone else and in the automobile world, selling used cars has a reputation. some people think you buy used cars. but interestingly, ebay is kind of their used car business is fantastically successful and i bought some cars off of ebay. ill never know the buyer and the transactions are gray. i'm telling you it is interesting that people will do business. a guy who's really very brilliant sound a bit with the notion that people are inherently good and that would be proven out and he was right. >> well, some people with say maybe not everybody is inherently good. >> its interest in the business model proved that was true. >> said today come you talk to your father i assume over his grandfather, henry ford. what did he ever tell you about henry ford? >> my dad was very close to his grandfather and i have a lot of stories that are just kind of fun stories that he told me about his great-grandfather. henry ford's innovation was inventing a car manufactured relatively quickly. >> a $5 a day wage when the average wage was $2 a profit sharing in his day for both of those lives and he was thrown out of capitalist societies for $5 a day wage and profit sharing idea. >> have you worried about competition from chinese manufacturers? >> i worry about competition everywhere. lee is disruptive world and we need to be aware of what everybody is doing. we can't dismiss anybody. between the start of today, distracting our world six months from now. that is the world we live in. we need to be accessible to these young companies. one of the things we spend a lot of time on is how do we interact with these young companies? how do we let them navigate our bureaucracy? we champion him within the company. >> sales are good now. your company from suvs and all-state trucks and gasoline prices were to go up against, those sales would go down. how are you trying to get that policy? >> it's interesting the world is always going to need trucks. we put our ego boosting gin into a truck and truck tires will never buy. they always one of ea. guess what, it worked great. we then made our truck although lebanon. people said they'll never buy aluminum tracks. you're taking 700 pounds await outcome which gives a much better fuel economy. either way, better performance, better braking, better acceleration. but we've taken as a philosophy as we are going to be making a full range of vehicles. we will make every single one of those vehicles as fuel efficient as they possibly can. and that cbs is now used to be suvs were big run of vehicles. now you've got small suvs because people like the utility. >> you're quite fascinated -- >> what would you recommend to somebody? >> well, probably something you don't mind beating up much. i do have favorite cars that are not ford. at the end of day i don't never see their wish. i've been around. this is one of your midsized cars in something like that. whatever you want to pay. >> this is a family car. and so we've been very successful in that segment. interestingly, to your point about growth and the shrinking of the segment does correlate. you raised a point a minute ago. what happens when prices go up? we've seen it about $4 a gallon. we start to see profound shifts in people's buying behaviors. the other thing is people get freaked out because they can anticipate what their ownership cycle is going to be like. what we are trying to do with all of our vehicles is making them really fuel-efficient so we won't have quite the same going forward. >> outlined today on it before they traded him? >> it's about a 45 year cycle. >> if you come here to deal with regulators, what is that experience? >> they have a very good relationship with the regulators. they take the time to understand our business and we take a lot of time to make sure they do understand. we invite them to detroit. take them to a lab and to our safety demos and then we try and help them with their jobs. so we gathered data for them. it's a pretty good relationship. there are days and weeks when it's not so great. we've been very pleased with the level of responsiveness. we been doing us a long time. >> you've been in the company for a long time. you can go another 10 or 15 years. probably longer than anybody. on the other hand, i've never been more excited about this whole world we've been discussing. our mobility with the tremendous change laid ahead of us. i wake up every morning so excited because i believe that any company's purpose is to make people's lives better. if it not doing that it shouldn't exist. that has to be reinterpreted through every error that we live in. i looked back to the model t. most people in this country didn't travel more than 25 miles from home in their lifetime. they enable people to choose where they lived, where they worked and where they played. it changed everything. and then we had things like obviously ambulances and police cars and fire trucks and the democracy during world war ii. so now we are at the threshold of a very different age. the challenge is how do we interpret that heritage with a new area and how do we make people's lives better in this new era? to me it's the most exciting point because strategically we've never been at a point like this. >> you have no interest in serving the government. >> if we do this right, we can make people's lives better around the world. to me that's a very compelling theme. >> you're the fourth generation and they're virtually no company is were they now said. what about the fifth-generation >> my kids are interested and i have nieces and nephews that are interested. they've got to be qualified. this is not a family employment office. i worked very closely with them to make sure they've got the right credentials both academically and that they start the appropriate place in the company and worked her tail off said they volunteer for all the jobs no one else wants to do. they have to want to do it and earn it. if they show they can do that, that is great. this is a tough world. they have to be as good or better than everybody else. >> he spent time trying to revitalize. we think the progress is? >> i really pleased. i'm old enough to remember the ride in the late 60s and i remember flying over and i remember my dad, he owns the detroit lions in the season tickets were in tiger stadium which was going to burn. at that time there were no computers so the ticket market -- there was no backup. he's got a couple players to meet them. the game came around, recognize my dad in a couple players. they were all carrying guns and so they loaded all the season tickets into the van. my dad gave them all tickets and then they walked into the border and the national guard was on every overpass and he went 100 miles an hour. he was breaking all the laws to get back home with the tickets. i remember that in that area of change changed everything. they said he was in a many, many year decline. and now we've still got a long way to go. the school system is still not close to where it needs to be. having said that, there is tremendous energy in the city. if my son is in the city he never would have lived. they went up five years ago. i would venture capital firm i started. every week there are new bars and restaurants opening up. i am more hopeful now about the city then i have been. so when we built ford field about 15 years ago, all the advice i got from all the business people whose you are added to your mind to build this in the city of detroit. they won't feel safe. there's nothing for them to do before or after the game. you know, you need to build it up to the northern suburbs which is world the money is. so at that time a terrific man. dennis and i worked it out and it's been a great thing. but for the early years, there was an element of what i just described. that worked. so it is ford field. funny how that kind of works out. >> what is it like your legacy? you are still relatively young. he looked back and people say here's what you did with his life. >> i don't spend any time thinking about that. to me it feels pretentious to even think about that. i don't know what my legacy is. i hope people will say he treated people love and that he cared about the company and he cared about communities but the company operated in. >> thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] i'm not -- [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> as we leave this event reuters news is reporting that hurricane matthew in florida into the 17 people as the towers towards the bahamas and florida. pictures of the storm as it is moving closer to the u.s. congressman ted deutch is saying that there is an 11:00 advisory issued from now as hurricane matthew remains a category three storm. hurricane warning has been extended north and he wants people to stay informed. governor rick scott has ordered mandatory evacuations for barrier island at 3:00 p.m. eastern from a voluntary evacuation in flagler in duval county have begun. congressman mario diaz-balart has retreated an update if you have a nerdy purchase supplies, gas up, take out cash and make a hurricane plan for your family. we have wrote to the white house coverage coming up later today when senator tim king will be campaigning in florida. i'm sorry, in philadelphia. the clinton campaign jobs plan you can see live on c-span starts at ex-pm eastern. the second presidential debate is 7:00 p.m. at washington university in missouri. boettcher live coverage of the event 30:00 eastern for ap view of the debate. >> as the nation of the president in november, america will have its first foreign-born first lady since lisa adams or will we have a former president as first gentleman. learn more about the influence of america's presidential spouses from c-span's first lady now available in paperback.

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