Skip to main content

Ford partners with What3words to offer precise navigation

Ford has joined forces with geocoding start-up What3words to offer its drivers in North America and Europe with more precise navigation. What3words, a global addressing system, divides the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigns each a three-word address made up dictionary words. Ford says its drivers will be able to enter destinations by voice or text for any location, including destinations without an address. Ford drivers will be able to connect the company’s SYNC 3 infotainment plat
February 27, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
278 Ford has joined forces with geocoding start-up What3words to offer its drivers in North America and Europe with more precise navigation.


What3words, a global addressing system, divides the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigns each a three-word address made up dictionary words.

Ford says its drivers will be able to enter destinations by voice or text for any location, including destinations without an address.  

Ford drivers will be able to connect the company’s SYNC 3 infotainment platform with the Whats3words app, available on iOS and Android devices. They can then input a three word address to navigate to a precise 3m x 3m square.

Don Butler, executive director, connected vehicle platform and product, at Ford, says the solution can be used by commercial vehicle drivers working from a mobile office and those driving for leisure.

What3words is available for Ford drivers in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, the US and Mexico. More locations are expected to follow later this year.

Related Content

  • October 26, 2017
    Data collection becoming a crowded market
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.
  • October 28, 2016
    New system expedites border crossings
    Enforcing border controls can create long queues for travellers, David Crawford looks at potential solutions. Long delays at border crossings in both North America and Europe have sparked the development of new queue visualisation and management technologies that are cutting hours, even days, off international passenger and freight journeys. At the westernmost end of the 2,019km (1,250 mile) Mexico–US frontier, two parallel crossings between Tijuana, in the former country, and the border city of San Diego,
  • October 22, 2018
    Interoperability: towards the new frontier
    After six years of intensive research, testing and negotiation, the US tolling industry is well on its way to groundbreaking results in the effort to establish regional - and eventually national - toll interoperability, says IBTTA’s Bill Cramer. Interoperability has been a high priority on the US tolling industry’s agenda for more than a decade. But several factors made it a uniquely complex issue to resolve - including the number of agencies involved, the significant investments those agencies had already
  • October 2, 2018
    Shock therapy: jolt for EV charging needed
    As sales of electric vehicles accelerate, the growth of charging infrastructure is in need of a big boost. Graham Anderson reports on whether Europe is up to it. Utilities, technology companies and vehicle manufacturers are battling to put in place new charging networks for electric vehicles (EVs) across Europe in response to a predicted dramatic surge in demand. Market experts believe that rapidly falling battery costs – which make up about one third of the costs of an electric car – and growing