Inside Ford's $1 Billion Bet On Detroit’s Future: Newlab at Michigan Central Ford spent a hefty sum turning an abandoned train station into a tech hub. We took a tour to see what the turnaround is all about. For 30 years, Detroit’s once-glamorous Michigan Central train station sat abandoned. The building signaled the city's past as an industrial hub and served as a reminder of its present-day struggles. Today, Michigan Central and the surrounding campus are abuzz with engineers, entrepreneurs, and creative thinkers. Ford’s Connected Car and Advanced Electric Vehicle teams call this place home—along with over 100 startups. What happened? Starting in 2018, Ford invested over $1 billion to bring Michigan Central back to life. In addition to restoring the main train hall, it partnered with Newlab, an incubator that focuses on "critical technologies," to occupy the disused book depository next door. A critical technology is anything essential to a country’s national security and economy, according to the company. Newlab Detroit’s specific focus is mobility, which means drones, robots, and autonomous vehicles are all being built and tested there. Mobility startups aren’t quite like software companies. Sure, you can design a car in 3D and model its aerodynamic properties on a computer, but actually building the car and testing it in the real world reveals issues a screen can’t. The same concept applies to all sorts of physical products. You can’t just finish writing the code, press send, and unleash your invention instantly. That’s where Newlab comes in. Newlab Detroit has over 30,000 square feet of communal lab and manufacturing space, with equipment ranging from CNC mills and laser cutters to industrial-scale 3D printers—and professional guidance on how to use them. There’s even an electrified roadbed outside for wirelessly charging electric vehicles. The idea is that having all this