Ford announced a new AI-powered service for its commercial fleet and telematics software customers called Ford Pro AI. The generative AI system analyzes data generated by commercial vehicles — including vehicle speed, seat belt activity, and engine health — and converts it into actionable items for fleet managers.
The new system manifests as — what else? — an AI chatbot within Ford’s Telematics software that customers can ask questions about their fleets or delegate tasks. Managers can ask the chatbot for recommendations to lower fuel costs, insight about specific vehicles in their fleets, or even to draft emails to a supervisor summarizing the output from their previous requests. The interface looks similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini — though Ford declined to name the specific model it was using.
Kevin Dunbar, general manager for Ford Pro Intelligence, said Ford Pro AI won’t just be your standard large-language model chatbot, but rather a tool that uses “accurate, manufacturer-grade vehicle data” to generate accurate, trustworthy responses.
“The result is a multi-agent architecture that’s built on clean, well-structured data sourced from each
customer’s distinct fleet reducing the potential of AI hallucinations,” Dunbar said in a briefing with reporters.
Like most automakers, Ford is integrating more AI-powered features into its products as it races to keep pace with the rapidly changing times. The company is using AI to speed up its vehicle design process and has integrated a chatbot into its smartphone app to help its passenger vehicle customers solve problems like how much mulch will fit in the bed of an F-150.
Ford is now aiming to bring this technology to the over 840,000 paid subscribers of its Ford Pro telematics software to help manage their commercial vehicle fleets. The vehicles don’t need to be Ford branded, specifically, as the new AI feature will work with any vehicle with embedded modems capable of transmitting data to the telematics platform. Ford said this reflects the reality that many commercial fleets operate vehicles from several manufacturers rather than relying on a single brand.
The new AI tool will be included within the existing Ford Pro telematics subscription, meaning customers won’t need to pay extra to use it. The service is currently only available to fleet managers who use the company’s telematics software, with no current plans to make it available to commercial drivers through the mobile app or in-car software.
Ford Pro AI operates in a read-only mode and will still require a human being in the loop to execute certain tasks. In that way, Ford insists it’s not trying to replace human labor, but rather automate certain tasks and improve workflows. Fleet management is “a high-friction, physical, and emotional job,” said Britta Farrow, Ford Pro communications manager. “Ford Pro AI can handle a lot of the operational data processing — the stuff that burns out fleet managers.”
“It definitely still requires human intervention,” Farrow added. “We don’t see a future where it would remove it completely.”
Ford wouldn’t disclose which large-language models it was using to power Ford Pro AI, describing it as “model agnostic,” similar to its Ford AI assistant for its smartphone app. All they would say is that the feature is built on Google Cloud infrastructure. (Last year, Ford’s CFO Sherry House said Ford would be integrating Google’s Gemini into its vehicles. The company also has deals with OpenAI, Anthropic, and China’s DeepSeek, according to The Wall Street Journal.)
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
