William Clay Ford Jr. talks Michigan Central Station rebirth 1-on-1

DETROIT (FOX 2) - The Michigan Central Station is reopening with a huge celebration after six years and nearly a billion dollars of renovations.

William Clay Ford Jr. is the executive chair at Ford Motor Company and spoke 1-on-1 with Roop Raj about the investment into the beloved landmark, what it means for Detroit's future and the path forward for the iconic automaker.

Roop: "You and I were sitting here in 2018 and we saw the graffiti on the wall and (with) your vision, is this exactly what you envisioned?"

Bill Ford Jr. : "Yeah, I'll tell you what, the people who worked on this building were magnificent. When I'd come down here during construction, the pride they took in this -  and the joy they took in working on this was just amazing. And they were determined to make this beautiful, and they did it."

Roop: "Give people an idea of what is it that this place will be for Detroiters and for Ford?"

Bill Ford Jr.: "It'll be several things. For a lot of people. It'll just be an awesome place to bring your family and friends and hang out, because it'll be beautiful. There'll be music, there will be art, there will be dining, there will be bars. It will just be a fun place to be.

"For Ford. It will be a place where our best and our brightest will come and work on the future of transportation."

Roop: "What do you tell a young person who's watching this probably streaming this right now about why Detroit is the place to come work?"

Bill Ford Jr.: "It means it'll be a place to work on incredibly interesting problems. Because we not only have this building, and we're going to have a lot of software and hardware engineers here, but we have the airspace. The FAA has given us the airspace and we can work with things like V-tall, which is vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, drones, and how they interact with vehicles.

"I mean, you think about the last mile delivery you could have a truck or a van, connected to a drone, connected to a robot. All taking different pieces of that journey in the delivery. We can experiment with all of that here. So to a young person, to be able to create not just a future of personal transportation, but the moving of everything. We can invent that here. In addition, you can do it in an amazingly beautiful place and a fun place."

Roop: "You hear a lot of politicians including Donald Trump, talk about EVs saying it'll drive the auto industry out of business? What goes through your mind when you hear that kind of rhetoric?"

Bill Ford Jr.: "I think you know, EVs certainly aren't for everybody. And one of the things that I feel really good about Ford is, we have something for everybody. We have internal combustion engines, we have hybrids here and many more coming, and then we have pure EVs. So we're not forcing anybody into anything. Whatever they want, we have, and I think ultimately the customer has to choose.

"One thing we do know about EVs, is the people who have them say that they won't go back to internal combustion, they will stay with EVs going forward. So it's growing and Ford's the number two Evie player in the US. And, but but I think very importantly, we have something for everybody."

Roop: "Did it move too quickly, you think?"

Bill Ford Jr.: "One thing we can never get right, and I don't think anybody ever has a crystal ball in terms of how quickly technology really develops. Because when I think back to 2015, 2016, there were a number of OEMs who said by 2019 we're going to have a whole bunch of autonomous vehicles on the road. And then we weren't saying anything and people were saying to me, are you guys asleep? But we knew how difficult it was. And we also knew the timing of that was so uncertain, and I think the timing of any of the adoption of any new technology is just unknown."

Stay with Fox 2 all day Thursday as we continue to bring you reports about the opening of the Michigan central train station and the celebration concert happening tomorrow evening as well.