Ford hires Blackberry engineers and opens Ottawa R&D centre

The Ford Motor Co, Dearborn MI, is hiring 400 engineers from Blackberry Ltd as part of a formal partnership struck last October to boost its expertise in automotive connectivity and mobility underpinning self-driving vehicles. The agreement will see the automaker establish a Research and Engineering Centre in Ottawa — home to Blackberry’s QNX division — as part of a $1.2 billion investment by Ford in the Ontario automotive sector. QNX has world-leading expertise in automotive software for operating systems, encryption technology, audio processing and a display system for windshields. It’s estimated that QNX software is embedded in 60 million vehicles worldwide. The announcement was made the same day that $204.8 million in public support was announced by the federal and provincial governments — $102.4 million from federal Automotive Innovation Fund and an equal amount from the Ontario government to revamp a Ford plant in Windsor ON.