The thing Ford was on to was one-job production lines (where each worker does one job-atom and the work moves to the next stage) wasn't it? IIRC Ford's project was to make the car affordable to those of more modest means, so "everyone" could have a car.

If you look at the quote then this interpretation makes more sense IMO - the quote clearly considers the position that cars were being made commercially 20 years before Ford.

TL;DR the Ford point is he democratised car use in the face of congress's earlier consideration that such widespread use would kill agriculture and people. (Mind you the congress memo quote seems pretty right on).