Sherminator98

Also the uncertainty of what is coming next with changes from government regulations etc

Ford sure seems adamant about not having an P/HEV Ranger or Bronco sold in the US going by peoples' comments over the past few years. Maybe they are going to tackle this some other way? But then again Ford's plan has changed quite a few times in the past 24 months and we still have no idea what their path forward is going to be going forward even though they would be providing guidance in the Spring...and its 40 days from summer.

One possibility is that there might be features/options that might be built into a car just to keep the configurations down to a minimum that can be activated with software even sold at a later date for a fixed price. Just as an example, it might be just easier to build every single vehicle with heated seats, even if they aren't activated off the assembly line. Down the road, someone can pay say a one time charge of $500 (pulling that number out of my ass) to get it work for the rest of the time they use the car. But that is also offset by people say wanting physical buttons in cars to do something like that. But that is a marketing and engineering exercise that I have no interest in solving without getting paid for it

yes that is the system in the Bronco Sport, but the regular Bronco has the one that bounces off the lines.

Going by the horribly translated comments (which one was anti EV, which I found hysterical)-Maybe this new Energy Bronco might be an EREV? Which would explain the new part about it.

I'm guessing its the coastal edition trim we are getting for the Bronco here.

Don't think that would be possible due to crash standards

Or has no clue how the auto industry works.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-executives-no-buybacks-commercial-134353339.html Uh No duh....

https://www.jalopnik.com/1854740/tesla-robotaxi-cybercab-trademarks-denied/

The Super duper Mustang

isn't that hardware often tied to other equipment on the vehicle that might be more useful or a standard option? Like the lane keeping cameras that might be part of a 360 camera setup? The real question is how much of it is a software function vs hardware. if its software only, it would be far more profitable because the HW already exists on the vehicle

Just doing some quick math, that adds about 40 bucks to a monthly payment on a 32k vs 34K price on a car with 10K down at 5% interest.

Don't under estimate people over buying vehicles. It explains why people are buying larger vehicles or pickups-just because hey it is nice to have a pickup to take junk to recycling 2x a year or bring home a big screen TV without needing it getting shipped to your house. Or when you get your crotch goblin from school and need to take their friends to sports practice or something like that. If you really want to get down to it, we only need one or two passenger vehicles because 75% of the time I'd venture to say that only one person is in a vehicle.

I think its getting to the point that might not be even enough. Just using the Escape as an example, its 9 MPG increase combined vs the 1.5L Ecoboost, with all the savings for around town driving. So maybe PHEVs will be a better solution On larger vehicles, like the F-150, the overall savings are minuscule and hybrids are just marketed as a power adder.

Another reason why sedans aren't going to be popular with manufactures

So I was doing the math- The Bronco Sport is 53.95 sq ft and using the Mondeo Sport its Footprint is 59.89 sq ft I was looking at the CAFE charts, but not sure if it would make that big of an impact?

Yeah its called making it an EV The longer wheelbase/larger footprint is just workaround for CAFE which is just going to be more onerous for the time being. So you can blame CAFE for making vehicles both larger and more expensive, because the amount of money to be able to make them meet CAFE destroys their abitily to be profitable, at least till EVs become more affordable

That is a good accounting question, I'm going to assume Model E will eat it since it was already earmarked for it?

The Ranger and Bronco aren't all that different when it comes to electronic subsystems. The bigger gripe I have is the Bronco (and I think Ranger) doesn't have automatic lane keeping and distancing like the Bronco Sport has. I've used it a couple times on my wife's Bronco Sport and even on a short hour drive or so, it cuts down on the amount of "fatigue" of just keeping the vehicle in the lane. Yeah I know it sounds lazy, but noticed when I was done with the drive, I wasn't as mentally or physically tired as if I had to do most of the "driving" myself-it cut the amount of effort by 50% or more. You set the cruise control, and just keep your hand on the wheel and keep aware of the traffic around you, instead of doing all of that plus keeping the vehicle centered in the lane and accelerating/decelerating. I was slightly impressed it came to a complete stop when I had it set for around town driving doing 40 mph and stopped with a resonable gap between you and the car in front.

https://www.motor1.com/news/758756/cadillac-sold-fewer-than-26-celestiqs-so-far/

I don't think it would be that big of an impact-IMO it would be an Escape/Edge replacement. It solves the "boring" issue those two products have. The Bronco Sport is 172" long, the current Escape is 180", the Edge is 188 and the Bronco is 191" or so for a 4 door model. The Nautilus/Mondeo Sport is 193.

They might have made good small platforms, but apparently they couldn't make a profit on them.

So I did some more digging and looking at photos and whatever this Bronco is, its based off the Lincoln Nautilus/Ford Mondeo Sport platform, at least going by its interior. I have a Bronco Sport and had a last gen Escape and my parents have a current gen one and you'd be amazed at how much they share in minor details with the interior-they look "different" but things like storage places or hard points are the same. This Bronco has a very similar center console/arm rest to the Nautilus and Mondeo Sport. The dash could be a modified Nautilus dash with just a 12 inch screen in the middle. The steering wheel is similar to what is on the Mondeo Sport with a Bronco center.

Food for thought-maybe that is exactly what Ford wants to do. Why are they going to chase down markets that they aren't competitive in and don't make money in? That would explain the decisions they are making over the past 10-20 years.