Riding along on a southeast Michigan road the touch of an icon brings up a map with several teardrop shaped icons, each one indicating a point of interest along the way.

Touching one then launches a narration, telling us the story of that place over the course of about three minutes.

The handy mobile tour guide is actually an app called Autio, previously only accessible on a smartphone with a $36 a year subscription.

But now, for the first time, Autio is available to owners of selected Ford and Lincoln vehicles with subscriptions to the Ford or Lincoln Digital Experience Plan for no additional fee through what Autio founder and CEO Woody Sears describes as a “native experience,” the companies announced Tuesday.

“Once you download the Autio app via the Google Play Store, the app is saved to your profile, and you can access it seamlessly via the in-vehicle display screen. There is no phone or login required,” explained Ashley Lambrix, general manager, retail, integrated services, Ford Motor Company, in an interview conducted via email.

Once launched, Autio will call up a map with places of interest along trip routes.

“Each one of our stories has a geographic center and then an active listening range around it, and then it automatically plays as you come into range of that story,” explained Sears.

“You can launch embedded maps and leverage the voice assistance get where you need to go, access embedded apps like Autio to launch a podcast to learn some history on the drive based on your location, and the kids can connect their tablets to the Wi-Fi hotspot to learn more about a topic,” added Lambrix.

There are more than 12,000 stories in Autio’s library and some are narrated by celebrities such as actors Kevin Costner, who is also an Autio investor, John Lithgow, Tyler Perry, Kerry Washington, former NBA coach Phil Jackson or another professional vocal talent, according to Sears.

Autio is available to customers subscribing to the Ford or Lincoln Digital Experience who own a 2025 model year or newer Ford Explorer, Ford Expedition, Lincoln Aviator and Lincoln Navigator models, plus 2024 model year and newer Lincoln Nautilus models.

It’s included in the subscription fees which run $14.99 a month, $149.95 a year or $745 for seven years. For Ford owners the first year is free. The first four years are free for Lincoln owners.

Ford decided to include Autio because “creating the best possible experience for Ford and Lincoln customers through the power of technology and software is at the core of our team’s goal,” said Lambrix.

For Sears, the idea to create Autio came after years of road trips growing up on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula followed by those he’s taken with his own family.

“We did lots of road trips around the West and we found ourselves looking things up often,” Sears recalled. “My wife and I, on Google or Wikipedia, trying to figure out how this town came to be, what people do here for a living,how it got its name, and sometimes we'd find those answers, but a lot of times it was either dry and encyclopedic, and we really wanted something that represented more of the great tour guides that we had on some of our trips.”

Sears subsequently founded Autio in 2020 with a library of 1,500 stories on places of interest in the western U.S. That library has now grown to 12,000 covering natural wonders, national parks, landmarks and more in all 50 states, he said.

Autio’s own story is getting around. Ford may have made the first move among car companies but Sears reveals “I fully anticipate that we'll be in additional automakers by next year.”