William Clay Ford, Jr., executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, June 13, 2019. Photo: Haim Zah / GPO.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem on Thursday with the visiting executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company, William Clay Ford, Jr.

“Israel has finally got an automotive industry,” Netanyahu said. “We tried, when I was a young officer, we had cars, Israeli-made, fiberglass cars. I leaned on one and my elbow went right through. We have now an autonomous vehicle industry and everything else that you see. And that’s just changing transportation.”

Ford commented, “It will continue to change because it’s not autonomous vehicles, it’s all the things that it will enable, all the content that will go into it, and you will be ground zero for all of that. It’s great.”

On Wednesday, the American automotive giant opened a research center in Tel Aviv that will focus on technologies in connectivity, sensors, automated-systems research, in-vehicle monitoring and cyber security.

“I’m going to be back very frequently because this really becomes the lifeblood of what Ford Motor Co will become in the future,” Ford said at the center’s launch.