jpd80

Amazing how you can galvanise a nation by branding groups or countries as enemies. Fortunately, the US is still a democracy and there's good processes in place to ensure that trade imbalances are addressed.

, The only two countries in the world that have a crap ton of cobalt are democratic republic of Congo and Australia. It's usually found in conjunction with copper and nickel mining but yes, Annode and cathode chemistry is moving away from cobalt.

The concern I have is that the Broncos could be lost in a sea of new releases and promotions from competitors, the air waves are going to be bombarded with all kinds of announcements and offers. The products are great but Ford needs to keep them in front of potential buyers.

Now that's interesting because for the past few years, current lithium mines have been over supplying the market and driving the price down which has lead to a couple of Mines being temporarily closed. If America proceeds with local supply of lithium in 2022, then that signals its intention to take lithium battery production from start to finish in house in North America, the ramifications of that are huge, most likely driving down the price of batteries much quicker than carmakers would be projecting. At the very least, it keeps all that business activity in North America.

No one, not even the government was going against medical advice, so no the government didn't do anything it liked, The good will of the citizens ensured broad community compliance with isolation measures, their patience now growing thin. No one in power can escape the thorough colonoscopy that's coming.

All of that may change, my country Australia is now being punished by China for being outspoken on an independent inquiry into what happened with the spread of the virus China smacked us with an 80% tariff on barley and is looking to cut other resources like coal but blinked with steel... maybe we should squirrel grip them and stop exporting everything including lithium....... Just kidding, we need our exports more than ever.....

It’s that tricky camouflage they use.......

Unless I'm mistaken, Tesla's batteries are made by Panasonic at Tesla's Gigafactory

What TT was saying above was that Medicaid makes the call on when patients are released from hospitals and instructs that they go to assisted living facilities that were Ill prepared, Como doesn't have a say in that but tried to make them follow CDC guidelines which is where it all broke down, all those nursing homes were just not prepared to or able to deal with all the still infected patients being thrown at them. I'm certain that NY was well and truly infected much earlier than officials are admitting, it had to be for that degree of spread.

I understand that, all costs and forecasts at the time were taken into account, it gave them a big weight reduction and better fuel economy numbers, all of that completely justified on the data Ford had at the time.... All carmakers have been dealing with rising steel and aluminium prices, Ford seemed to make a bigger issue out of it, so I'd take that as a sign of perhaps Ford ignored a few potential financial threats to get the ally F150 green lit?

Well Ford has been saying that increasing costs of steel and aluminium are strong economic headwinds which is code for lower profits. it just seems like Ford has had seen a big blowout in costs in the past couple of years. I think it’s suffering with so much US based manufacturing, not just wages it’s everything.

The only reason that dealers would persist with selling low profit vehicles is to get the ongoing servicing.

Burning Explorers? At least there's not a Tahoe in sight.

RAV4 is the new Camry or at least the direction Toyota expects those buyers to migrate, it's the obvious reason why Toyota would is now running two plants with a ton of production capacity. The return of the Vensza on RAV4's platform further signals Toyota's intentions.

Precisely and the missing piece that most don't know is that Transporter and Amarok are on the same platform so rather than expending resources on those two, VW is just going to outsource supply to Ford. Transit and Transit Custom are built together in the same plant, they follow the same build sequence regardless of size difference or powertrain drive which is loaded from below on an engine cradle or subframe. It wouldn't surprise me that Transit and Transit are very close cousins if not extension s of the same platform. Glad to be proven wrong on this but this is all great news for Ford and VW who both benefit in ways that matter to their own organisations.

Thank you for chiming in with a link, my point was that back then, Camry was sales leader but not making much profit. Fortubately, Toyota found ways to reduce costs via greater efficiency. Ford on the other let Fusion sales ebb away and turned its back on cars, choosing new utilities instead.

Ford seems to be doing that a lot lately, don't they...I wonder why....

My take is that it's the VW Caddy reskinned as Transit Connect in Europe and ROW, it's basically the reciprocal of Ford Transit replacing VW Transporter.

Until the virus, the Bronco was on schedule for job 1 in December, a timetable that didn't change in over four years.

It’s interest that Ford only began to decry the Fusion when it’s high value buyers left mostly because of the ineffective 2015 makeover. Less than two years ago, the head of Toyota was warning North America that unless Camry became more profitable, it would be replaced by a cheaper import. I’m getting the feeling that a lot of manufacturers are in the same boat with profitability but find solace in taking market percentage as a second prize to keep stock holder from voicing displeasure with the region.

It just convinced me more that Ford was planning to import cars from China until the whole thing went south, adding cars back into the US was definitely worth a shot when other regions carry a fair chunk of the costs.

We all got dizzy watching Ford change plans so many times, each time they declared it was the right thing to do but honestly they were chasing their tails by trying to squeeze the bucks so tight. In my mind, there’s no reason why C2 Focus and Fusion couldn’t have shared Hermosillo and SLP be the home of Ford’s new products going to Hermosillo in the near future. The simple answer is that Ford didn’t want to pay $1.6 billion to effectively keep two cars hanging around, maybe they’re right if cars are now non-essential builds and resource that don’t have to be expended anymore. i feel for you guys with contract negotiations, Ford is the automotive equivalent of couch potatoes, if accountants show that Ford can save money by doing less, then that’s what they do.

Correct, the GFC showed us exactly what new vehicle buyers did and it wasn't running to cheap cars, everything you've said on this topic in recent posts has been spot on in my opinion.

Sometimes it's just a way for alpha types to hijack threads and turn them into them and us battlefields. It normally takes a page or two for the masks to come off and the insults to really get going. We need some new vehicle releases to get everyone's minds back on why we're here on BON.

Yeah, it makes me laugh when I see people on the news wearing a face mask incorrectly, the nose is out on display...... Sure, the driver is in the car and probably didn’t think about whether he would be snapped.