Ford has announced its plans to help avoid a potential threat of extreme traffic jam at the 2012 Mobile Conference in Barcelona. According to the company’s statistics, the number of cars on the world’s roads is to grow from 1 billion now to 4 billion within 40 years.

Photo: William Clay Ford, Jr. at the World Mobile Conference in Barcelona with the new Ford B-MAX

Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford said that the only way to avoid the problem is to create “a global transportation network that utilizes communication between vehicles, transport infrastructure and individual mobile devices”.

Сar buying is growing at a rate of 7.5 percent annually. In China, the world’s longest period of gridlock was registered at 11 days during 2010. Ford’s ‘Blueprint for Mobility’ will develop solutions for the problem. Ford will try to forecast what transportation will look like in 2025 and beyond, and the technologies, business models and partnerships needed to get there.

“If we do nothing, we face the prospect of ‘global gridlock’, a never-ending traffic jam that wastes time, energy and resources and even compromises the flow of commerce and healthcare,” said Bill Ford in a preview of Ford Motor Company’s ‘Blueprint for Mobility’.

“The cooperation needed between the automotive and telecommunications industries will be greater than ever as we prepare for and manage the future.  We will need to develop new technologies, as well as new ways of looking at the world,” he added.

Ford’s near-term plans encompass 5 to 7 years and include the development of increasingly intuitive in-car mobile communications options and driver interfaces that alert drivers to traffic jams and accidents. It also will be developing solutions for parking and driving in slow-moving traffic.

Ford’s mid-term plans are set for years of 2017 to 2025 and include the introduction of semi-autonomous driving technology as well as more interaction between individual cars on the road due to computing power and numbers of sensors in vehicles. Additionally, Ford will work on the enabling of the vehicle-to-cloud and vehicle-to infrastructure communication.

Last year, Ford teamed up with with SHFT.com to promote ‘green’ cars.