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Ford Motor Co. Chief EV, Digital and Design Officer Doug Field shared an update of the company’s future strategy as the automaker navigates the auto industry’s transition to software-defined vehicles, in a May 2 blog post.
Ford’s future-state software project, code-named “FNV4,” will combine with its existing vehicle architecture dubbed “FNV3” into a new version referred to as “FNV3.X.” Field said Ford plans to build on its FNV3.X architecture and offer it across a full portfolio of vehicles.
“In today’s automobiles, software is the single biggest lever in advancing a customer’s ownership experience,” Field said in the blog post.
Field said Ford is already far ahead of its competitors in deploying vehicle software updates. The company delivered 9.5 million updates to its fleet in the first quarter of 2025, according to its blog post, and the shift to its FNV3.X vehicle architecture will deliver software innovations even more quickly to customers.
The new architecture will facilitate the rollout of new digital services to customers and improve vehicle quality. It will also support advanced vehicle security and deliver driving and infotainment enhancements to more Ford customers, according to Field.
In addition to improving the customer experience, the FNV3.X architecture will allow the automaker to extend the current digital experience — currently offered in the Explorer, Lincoln Nautilus and Navigator — to other vehicles, including the Bronco, F-150, Mustang and Ranger. This approach will also enable Ford to more easily add its BlueCruise hands-free driving technology to additional models that otherwise wouldn’t support it, as the required architecture will be preinstalled.
“Whether it’s hands-free highway driving with BlueCruise, intelligent navigation, using your phone as a key, or our Ford Security Package to give you peace of mind, we’re integrating technology that actually makes life better, and doing it across as many of our vehicles as we can,” Field said in the blog post.
Unified software across the portfolio
Like other automakers, Ford is migrating from traditional vehicle architectures to electrical-electronic systems powered by software that can be regularly updated over-the-air.
Field said software should be available across Ford’s lineup to reach as many customers as possible. Having a dedicated electrical architecture reserved for some vehicles and a legacy architecture for other models — while simultaneously trying to keep them all updated — is not a good strategy for Ford, according to the blog.