silvrsvt

It is a bit of hyperbole-they are building plants in North America using CATL as a partner along with LG (at BOC), so a Chinese and South Korean company.

Oh so they can do this? Toyota Will Replace Over 100,000 V6 Engines in Recalled Tundras, Lexus SUVs

https://www.autoweek.com/news/a61699950/ford-small-evs-with-chinese-batteries Lots of good info plus talks about Ford Pro and how they can't make enough transits and Super Duties.

not to mention they look weird unless they are on like 35in tire.

But also keep in mind that anything the auto industry does is at least 2-3 years behind when it was first started. They don't toss out engines with no testing and it takes time to spool up production. It goes back to specs being changed to make them cheaper.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/a61687963/tesla-robotaxi-coming-roadster-entry-model I'm betting this will fail spectacularly

I think the driving force behind that is having limited production for it with the Super Duty. That shouldn't be an issue once Oakville is up and running.

The really strange thing is that Hyundai calls it a compact CUV, when it should be considered a mid sizer (it is 190 inches long and 75 in wide, roughly the same size as say a Bronco or Edge)-so considering that, I don't think its too out of line for a top end model (which I'm assuming the one I got a rid in was)...they start at $33.9K

So Sorry to hear about your wife...that is rough. The 2002-2010 Generation Explorer and the 2005-2010 Mustang where the best looking and most timeless looking Ford products of that era.

There are a couple different variants of the grill also

https://insideevs.com/news/727524/rivian-ford-mercedes-benz/

One possibility is that it could require additional testing due to side impact standards?

Time to bring this thread back from the dead- I randomly got a ride in a Santa Fe on Saturday-was a friends party and his wife's friend got one as a loaner and she took it out for a test ride. Anyways-they don't look nearly as good in person vs photos-the car I got a ride in was Silver and black and looked better then the few I've seen previously on the road. The 8 bit graphics looking H tail lights had lots of comments from non-car people I was with (was in LBI with family when I saw the other ones) The tech on it was pretty impressive-it had the 360 camera on it and the dash was sort of larger version of what is found in the 2024 Mustang. When you turn the signal on, you get a blind spot camera view popping up on the dash-which IMO could be more distracting then useful. The rear view "mirror" is actually a screen-which I really didn't like-it worked well but there was an ever so slight perceptible lag with the video vs reflective mirror. The gear selector is a weird block thing attached to the steering column. Passenger side seat had plenty of leg room. All this for $57K...

This is a neat little detail. Huge improvement over the Celestiq styling wise.

How much an impact to range do you have with towing though? I'm not saying its not possible, but if you have to drive say 200+ miles in an EV towing at max load, you may not get there one charge.

Given the disadvantages that an EV pickup would have, the Lightning wouldn't be a good choice for most use cases vs what the T3 would be optimized for. I'm seeing the T3 as something roughly the equivalent to the Rivian RT1 in size, so basically a Ranger or slightly larger product that would be great for a lifestyle vehicle (i.e. the vast majority of people buying a truck for personal transportation) or light duty fleet use like say a parks vehicle or something that isn't required to tow or use its payload to max levels regularly. I don't see a Lightning or any other EV currently being useful to regularly tow a boat or horses around in a "real" work situation....but I'm open to things I've might have missed.

So finally got some time to take a look at Ford C2 sales in China and all it does is raise more questions in my mind about business choices there. The most recent entry I could find was 2022, which is useful because it includes the new products that came out: 60K Mondeo 26K Edge 15K Nautilus 10K Lincoln Z 6.8K Evos So roughly 118K in product spilt between 2 major top hats with an additional 2-3 changes per top hat-the Mondeo and Z are pretty much the same product with different bits of plastic, while the Evos, Edge and Nautilus have significant changes Meanwhile in the NA market-the Edge and Nautilus outsold the whole lot in 2023 (2022 production was limited by COVID issues) with a combined total of 130K units. I get the EV thing, but at the same time with some minor sheet metal changes you could have a new Edge and sell the Evos as a Subaru competitor for additional volume. Just looking at Ford's Chinese sales numbers, it makes me wonder why they stay there, but I guess their JVs sell much better then they do alone.

The biggest assembly issue I can think of that Ford has had is with attaching windshields, that that boils down to people not checking their equipment properly.

Not at all, the F-150 in ICE/Hybrid forms be around till at least the middle of next decade. The T3 is just an additional model-maybe the Ranger and Bronco will move to it down the road before the F-150 goes fully electric.

I'm guessing that it is because there isn't enough budget to go around for a completely bespoke model sheet metal? They sold 73K Expeditions and 17K Navigators last year. The Escape sold 140K and the Explorer sold 180K with their Lincoln counterparts selling about 27K respectively in North America, not sure how much in the way of Chinese sales. So they have a bit more money to play with.

Your not wrong about that but I'm guessing that other ideas for names might have been copywrited?

Yes but given how the market will be in a few years, will customers support it? It seems like the Cybertruck and RT1 pickups are expensive playthings for influencers (at least the cybertruck) and the T3 would focus on that market. I’m not sure how much demand there would be for a “work EV truck” with people who buy them being on the conservative side. It would seem like the T3 would appeal to light duty fleet that an EV truck would excel at.

Makes it easier to brand and compare trim levels for CUV/SUV products. The Bronco is a different beast, but uses the same concept.

Well that was before everything changed and EV sales slowed down https://uaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/HourlyHighlighter-Ford_FINAL.pdf

That has been pretty much spelled out by the UAW contract with the people working on the Lightning having firs dibs for jobs at BOC. I don't see why the Lightning would continue with the new T3