Bill Ford says Google, drone testing coming to Michigan Central Station

Birmingham — Ford Motor Co. executive chairman Bill Ford Jr. on Wednesday said Michigan Central Station will house Alphabet Inc.'s Google to train students in coding and other technology-related skills and its campus will conduct drone testing.

It's been 36 years since the last trains left the depot and almost six years since Ford Motor Co. acquired the site from the Ambassador Bridge-owning Moroun family. The station is set to reopen to the public on June 6, promising new life as a mobility innovation hub to the once-derelict symbol of Detroit's struggles in an effort to attract and retain tech talent the industry needs in its next chapter.

A glimpse of the future already is seen next door at the former Book Depository, where New Lab LLC opened last year and is home to 93 startups collaborating and growing their businesses.

"It'll be bigger companies working in the train station hand-in-hand with these startups," Ford said at the Detroit Free Press' Breakfast Club Series at the Daxton Hotel. "Companies like Google will be there. Obviously, Ford is going to be there. This is an open platform. We want everyone to come. We don't want this be a Ford thing."

The Detroit News sent an inquiry to Google about its tenancy Monday morning.

In 2018, the Dearborn automaker outlined an urban electric and autonomous vehicle campus with 5,000 tax-paying jobs, half from the automaker’s mobility team and the rest from startups and suppliers.

Also known to be at the train station will be drop-in space for 10 nonprofit groups serving Detroit-area youth that's a part of a $10 million campaign by Ford and his wife, Lisa, to establish permanent endowments for the organizations in partnership with the Children's Foundation.

"A lot of our smaller organizations really live year-to-year," Ford said about the efforts. "We wanted to see if we could take some of the pressure off of them."

As for the ground floor of the station, Ford said there will be restaurants, bars and other retail as well as art and music.

"I'm so proud of the work that was done," he said. "The photograph that was shown is the decay of Detroit. Now it's going to be the future of Detroit."

The company also has rights to the roads around the campus as well as Federal Aviation Administration air rights to do drone testing and vehicle-to-drone testing for delivery and search-and-rescue applications, Ford said.

In November, the Michigan Transportation Department and the city of Detroit opened a quarter-mile segment of 14th Street outside New Lab between Marantette and Dalzelle streets as the first road in the United States using technology from Israel startup Electreon Wireless Ltd. that can charge electric vehicles as they move.

The automaker also has partnered with the state and California smart-road startup Cavnue LLC to develop a first-in-the-nation autonomous vehicle corridor between Detroit and Ann Arbor that parallels Interstate 94.

All combined, there's nothing like this site, Ford said: "Silicon Valley doesn't have that."

Sharnese Marshall, CEO of The Konnection, a nonprofit focused on chronically absent students in Detroit, recently took some of the students to the campus and New Lab.

"Now they want to work in transportation and mobility," she said. "Before, they had no idea. But visually going and seeing it, they got excited about it."

The project is another example how Ford is a "great statesman for the region," said Claude Molinari, CEO of the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau. "What once was a weakness for the city is becoming its strength."

The opening of the train station, however, comes as Ford and the rest of the industry sees a bumpier road than expected to mass adoption of EVs. The automaker expects to lose up to $5.5 billion from its EV division in 2024 and has delayed $12 billion in spending on EVs, including delaying products like a three-row SUV. Meanwhile, it's reemphasized its transitional hybrid products.

"We've got something for everybody," Ford said. "We don't know what the (EV) adoption curve will look like. One thing we know for sure is they are coming. The research shows the people that have them don't want to go back."

The presidential election in November could have huge implications for that adoption curve as President Joe Biden has finalized the most aggressive greenhouse gas tailpipe emission standards to date, and expected Republican nominee Donald Trump says he would roll back those regulations. Ford said he doesn't expect the debate to be a major deciding factor for voters given other issues in the world, but said the whipsawing between administrations is difficult with the three-to-five-year lead times on vehicle product development.

"Just pick a path, and we'll go for it," he said. "The hurricanes that we're in now — they're not winds — that are just bashing everybody from pillar to post, we're trying to tune it out and just say, 'OK, what's the most logical path for us going forward as a company, how do we hedge our bets, ... and then let the customer decide."

bnoble@detroitnews.com

@BreanaCNoble