Ford Research and Innovation, the carmaker's advanced engineering arm, will open the new Silicon Valley lab in the first quarter, helping ensure Ford keeps pace with consumer trends and aggressively prepares for the future by developing mobility solutions to harness the power of seamless connectivity, cloud computing and clean technology.

The new Ford lab will be located in the San Francisco Bay area of California and will serve as a hub for independent technology projects and identification of new research investments and partners located along the west coast. Ultimately, the lab will create an "innovation network" connecting Ford's Advanced Design Studio in Irvine, CA, and Ford employees working with connectivity platform partner Microsoft.

The number of Ford employees at its new lab will be comparable to what you expect of a startup, with an emphasis on quality over quantity, said K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior technical leader for open innovation with Ford Research and Innovation.

Prasad added that the establishment of Ford's all-new Silicon Valley lab will not duplicate or replace work being done at the company's Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn, its European facility in Aachen, Germany, or the recently established technology office in Nanjing, China.

For further infpormation: http://corporate.ford.com.