Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates paid a call on Detroit's struggling automakers to give some advice, a little inspiration and a gift during a visit to Dearborn, Michigan, for an automotive summit.

Gates shared the platform with Ford Motor Co. chief executive officer and fellow billionaire Bill Ford. Ford seemed energized by Gates' presence and offered his own upbeat assessment on how the astute use of technology can help domestic carmakers get through the current crisis, which has been marked by shrinking profits, shaky finances, and falling market share.

Ford told the Microsoft Forum that it was important for the auto industry to keep investing in new technology, despite the short-term financial pressures. Moreover, he now believed that the bold and successful implementation of new technology will help separate winners from losers in the auto industry in the future. "I'm really excited about our prospects," Ford said. The Ford CEO also said automakers need robust partnerships with innovative companies such as Microsoft to stay abreast of change and ahead of the competition.

Gates predicted that technology will make cars safer and make auto companies and their dealers and suppliers more efficient and more responsive to customers.

Gates, speaking at an Automotive Summit sponsored by Microsoft, said that critical hardware such as hard drives and high-definition screens are becoming less expensive, making it feasible to fit them into automobiles. "One thing Microsoft has always believed in is betting on new technology, hiring the best researchers and taking on very tough problems whether it's the software for speech recognition, software for visual recognition. These are very tough problems we believe will be solved in the next ten years," Gates noted. "We spend more on R&D than any company in the world," he said. Big improvements in voice recognition and visual recognition software that uses a camera to navigate through traffic are high on the wish list of automakers, who want to reshape vehicles for 21st-century motorists. "Today the cost of a hard disk is low enough that the idea of a hard disk in your car for mapping information or storing songs, that's very reasonable. A hard disk is a $30 or $40 bite (now) and the capacity doubles every 18 months," he observed.

"The screen technology is becoming really phenomenal," Gates said. "In the next few years, it will all move towards high definition," he said. "The screen in the cars will present information in a richer way. You can be shown exactly where you should make the turn," Gates said.

The cost of wireless networks and equipment also is coming down, Gates said. "We are getting from the hardware level the things that we need," he added, and they will change the way that things such as entertainment packages and traffic or routing information is delivered to the vehicle. Gates noted the cost of digital cameras is coming down fast and cameras are one of the technologies that could make it possible to build vehicles that can avoid accidents.

It also should be possible to download information from digital day planners into the automobile so it could plot the route to the driver's next appointment, Gates said.

"The embrace of technology will be the key for the leaders of the industry," he said.

Gates also stressed that technology also should help auto companies, suppliers, and dealers manage their business more effectively. One of the keys will be to make more information more accessible faster, to more people from the top to the bottom of the company, Gates said.
In the automotive business, where margins are small, the extra efficiency gained from sophisticated new software could be critical, Gates added. The software is already available to help track critical items such as warranty costs, to study sales incentives, or to track sales, he said. In addition, new software should be able to create easily accessible profiles of customers and their purchases and service visits.

"I hope many of these solutions become a reality for many of the people here," Gates said. Microsoft also is working on new software that will make it easier employees of a company such as Ford to work together and to collaborate with select suppliers. "When we design software, we want it to be used by everyone in the world," Gates said.

"The embrace of technology will be the key for the leaders of the industry," he said.