In Future Defined By Gen Z, Ford Imagines Equality — And Fear

After a decade of training her crystal ball on the near-term future, Ford futurist Sheryl Connelly decided to take a look at the far future, based on a global survey of thousands of consumers.

And in the tenth year of the company’s Looking Further with Ford Trends Report, consumers are telling Connelly that they foresee fantastic things such as traveling to other planets for leisure and entertainment and troubling things such as Generation Z’s lack of interest in propagating the future of the human race.

At the same time, Ford has leaned into using the trends report as more of a vehicle for marketing its own evolving orientation toward the future under new CEO Jim Farley, which includes an abrupt and new corporate commitment to building and selling all-electric vehicles and the company’s issuance of the largest green bond in U.S. corporate history, for $2.5 billion. Proceeds will be aimed at environmental initiatives.

“Our leaders at all levels are driving disruption,” Connelly said in a letter accompanying the report. “We seek to understand global citizens’ attitudes, aspirations and anxieties about the future — so we can help them be free to move and free to pursue their dreams, in this decade and beyond.”

Highlights of the report:

The Future of Our Planet: “Climate change has become so severe that the question now is no longer simply how to sustain this planet, but how to exit it,” the report said. Thus, 81% of adults globally say climate change makes them worried for their children’s future, and a whopping 40% of Canadian women cite concerns about climate change as a reason for not wanting to have children.

The Future of Mobility: In the survey, 31% of GenZ and millennials agreed that “today’s children will not need to learn how to drive.” And when they do, future motorists may need a pilot’s license: 38% of men globally think flying cars will become a reality by 2050.

The Future of Productivity: In the wake of a pandemic that changed the location of “work” to a remarkable degree, 13% of adults globally said work “will never return to normal.” And while they understand that future work will be augmented increasingly by machine learning and artificial intelligence, 36% of adults said they fear AI.

The Future of Information & Knowledge: Amid a tsunami of information and data that keeps growing exponentially every day — and the ideological twisting of information by news media — 65% of adults globally believe that, in 2035, distinguishing whether information is true or false will be more difficult than it is today.

The Future of Identity & Belonging: The report asks us to “imagine a world where labels have become meaningless — where instituionalized ideas about age, gender race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and disability are rooted out in favor of greater inclusivity.” A Lennonesque sentiment, for sure — yet 64% of adults surveyed agreed that, “In the future, people will be less tolerant of opposing viewpoints than they are today.”

The Future of Family: Similarly, Connelly asks report consumers to “imagine a world where family is no longer defined by marriage or bloodline” and notes that “marriage rates are declining in advanced economies — [as are] birth rates.” By 2035, nearly half of all young adults in the survey agreed that they think marriage will become an outdated concept.