jpd80

In the end, BEV buyers will tell manufacturers like Ford what they will and won’t buy for whatever price, the days of gotta have extortion pricing are over while interests rates are at current levels and folks are wary of trade in prices declining over the next few years. That’s bound to happen as battery tech get better, the vehicles sold today will be even less desirable in four or five years time… with a combined 40,000 unsold Lightnings and Mach Es sitting there needing both strong incentives and low cost leasing to move them, I don’t see Ford moving the conversation of premium pricing, not with this generation anyway. We’re a million miles away from Ford demanding dealers do those costly upgrades to sell BEVs, now Ford is telling dealers to take money and get rid of them…..

Correct, it’s about managing charging while at home /work places. The issue is security at night, some recharge facilities put drivers (women) in potentially dangerous positions if they get stuck with a flat BEV, they can’t just quickly unplug and drive off like you can with a gasoline vehicle refuelling. And that’s why auto companies have clinics to confirm that their vehicle styling is still in that corridor of acceptability. Small changes in detail can have big affect or influence on buyer perceptions, it doesn’t have to be miles wrong to disappoint folks, that’s why most designs are lowest common denominator “bland” vanilla…..the ones that really pop like Maverick must be like a Eureka moment to designers….who normally thinks that way to turn a van into a squared off pickup, simply brilliant and quick decision. I sometimes wonder if too many inputs into designing a vehicle and what could be a powerful styling message gets watered down….

Correct, every decision to shorten a vehicles length impacts another feature or design function. Remove the front overhang normally reserved for a FWD ICE and the vehicle loses the frunk, it’s also harder to get that aero efficient dart shaped front but more importantly, the crash protection cell becomes much shorter… Equally, bobbing the trunk area disappoints buyer luggage room but also puts the rear seats closer to the back end, those folks could be seriously injured in a rear end crash…..

And ther lies the paradox, improving internal packaging by moving the wheels out to the corners of the vehicle and the front and rear become more bulbous, not that aero dart shape you crave for efficiency. In smaller vehicles, everything is a compromise and sometimes Form wins over function but mostly the truth is that people like different things and that’s the stylists biggest nightmare.

Absolutely, it never occurs to some of thes geniuses that older people only want the basics without all the bells and whistles. I’m pretty sure that most older folks would find modern vehicles with a giant tablet center screen a bit daunting, hence a return to some buttons and dials below the screen…but I do like the simplicity of things like Apple CarPlay and modern navigation systems. I think those are the way in for enlightenment. And you’re right, a lot of people think they know what they want but find it way easier to to tell us what they do and don’t like once there’s an actual vehicle in front of them. I like the light weighting that was done to F Series trucks, the alloy bodies brought down weight enough to have a significant improvement in fuel economy and this Ranger. So I wonder if that’s an option while BEVs are stuck with larger heavier batteries, maybe extracting weight with aluminium bodies would be enough to get better range and meet efficiency targets?

Well, there is the European MEB based BEVs about to drop but the amount of changes made to make them affordable, it’s easy to see why Ford started its own design projects. They’re having real problems getting the affordable part of BEV compact vehicles….. With regards to my inaccurate initial comments, let me restate this way: If Ford was to use the new GE2 platform to develop a BEV Mustang coupe along with companion vehicles like a four door mid sized sedan and a couple of utilities like a Boxy SUV and an Edge sized hatchback, I think they would do a lot better selling larger looking vehicles that can more easily justify higher prices…

Also, having a well established vehicle dominate those markets certainly helps but equally, change away from the formula too much and those buyer will disappear.

Originally, there were two plants on the one site, Wayne Assembly Plant that made Focus (& C-Max) and Michigan Truck Plant making Navigator and Expedition. Today, I think the old Wayne Plant area is used for parts store and some vehicle fit out for Bronco accessories…..so there’s no real way of splitting them back up into two plants…. My point is that building compact cars there was always uneconomic and basically a CAFE offset for larger cars built within the USA. It was a constant point of annoyance for Mulally when told the cars lost money and there was no foreseeable way to improve that, even with DOE lending assistance. Linking back to this thread, I can’t see how an affordable compact electric vehicle can be made profitably in the US when perhaps larger mid-Sized BEVs like a Mustang coupe, a four door sedan and companion Utility maybe even SUV and crossover styles would all be a better proposition in at Louisville.

Exactly so but Ford has this pretentious attitude of perpetually trying raise prices but undone by quality issues If there was no Lincoln brand, Ford could lift its ceiling but the Lincoln’s stop that (Mulally’s issue with keeping it).

In a way, I’m surprised that Ford didn’t follow up Flex with another cycle on say C2

But isn’t that Ford all over, they squeeze the last juice out of old product, call it a commodity to kick it to the gutter and then wonder how on earth to shift 20,000 Mach Es without turning them into a commodity priced vehicle.

And on the Ford side, Last month, Edge had 13,300 sales, a well aged vehicle due for replacement, I find it so strange that Ford is now more than happy to throw that away…

Ford Motor should be an absolute license to print money, how stupid do you have to be to foul that up? Why didn’t they just get China to pay for most of the development for C2 Edge/Nautilus and then, just do a nice fastback version of the Edge for North America……..

The irony in all of this was for all Ford was saying about BEV build costs approaching ICEs, Back in 2022, there was an article where Ford shared that Mach E cost $25,000 more to build than a comparable Edge…. Now, I don’t know if that added cost is completely attributable to the giant battery or if it’s due to some other drag anchor cost (recovery costs for two lots of project design & development?). Anyways, Ford really knows how to mangle its own success but at least Mach E and Lightning are still selling and buyers really like them, even if sales are less than what Ford was expecting……

At the time, there were two reasons given for delaying the three row BEV: 1. To give Mach E enough production volume as supplying Europe and North America 2. To give Lightning enough battery supply to cover anticipated sales based on 200K reservations Before redesign of the three row twins, Ford was courting the idea of the Ford being a BEV Explorer but then redesigned the thing away form boxy SUV to be a Tesla X type vehicle with better efficiency and good chance of commanding a price above $70,000……or roughly $10,000 less than Tesla X, Ouch.

And from that table, it should be clear that Tesla’s combined sales account for two thirds of all US sales last year. Combined sales of all other brands was only about half of Tesla’s sales, that’s the epitome of dominating a market. It’s no wonder that Ford has around 40,000 unsold BEVs in its inventory.….

Don’t forget that part of that money also goes towards an on-site battery plant Ford release at the time stated that Oakville would manufacture high volume BEVs Ford is investing C$1.8 billion to transform Oakville (Ont.) Assembly Complex into a Canadian hub of electric vehicle manufacturing that will include vehicle and battery pack assembly; site transformation key to Ford’s plan to reach a global production run rate of 2 million EVs annually by the end of 2026 The new campus – to be renamed Oakville Electric Vehicle Complex – will be a high-volume manufacturing hub for North American EV production, repurposing existing buildings into a state-of-the-art facility that leverages Oakville’s experienced workforce Ford will begin to retool and transform the Oakville complex in the second quarter of 2024 to prepare for production of next-generation electric vehicles beginning in 2025 Ford is the first full-line automaker committed to producing passenger EVs in Canada for the North American market

With respect, you’re over complicating this. Consider what the Mach Es owe Ford - the production cost minus what is recovered by leasing Additionally, factor in a small profit on the disposal price after the original lease is completed. Normally, that’s how manufacturers get a failed or slow selling vehicle off their books..

While the decline in BEV sales may have its own reasons, ICE vehicle sales have also declined in recent months as well. Two things could be happening at the same time but I wonder if most of the early BEV adopters now have their vehicles and the market now sees true level of interest that’s subject to higher interest rates and other increased financial pressure. It feels like green politicians think they have more community support than is actually the case and while most people want power generation and vehicles to evolve to much greener versions, asking everyone to shoulder that pain of cost immediately (right now) is political suicide. Somewhere along the line, the green train switched from encouraging the many to follow sensible evolving legislation to targets that industry is saying are not possible in the expected time frame. To me, more benefits would be had from changing the power generation to solar-wind-batteries than pushing so hard with BEVs when the distribution grid is just not ready for mass public charging. So relying on green consumerism to get BEV sales going is not really a thing beyond small sales, people buying efficient gasoline or hybrid have far less issues to contend with, a lot of people still see electric vehicles as unnecessary complication away from a simpler lower cost solution with much less initial outlay……who wants to pay more for BEVs on the promise of future savings and that’s without considering the inevitable collapse in future resale value of todays BEVs.

At this point, I doubt that Ford knows exactly who wants to buy BEVs and what they want….. Once interest rates started going up and up, it seems like a lot of buyers lost interest…..

If you don’t like Ford’s plans, just wait a couple of months, you’re bound to find one you like…

It’s hard to judge knowing that todays battery technology is really a get through to the eventual solid state version that promises higher density and reduced weight and size. Today, we suffer the consequences of needing large heavy batteries to guarantee sufficient range, so a lot of the vehicle size and form is linked to that plus people seem to prefer the more square, rugged style of utility, some prefer rounded dart shape but I think those will become “commodities” only because they will be cheapest, easiest form to guarantee efficiency with least amount of battery.

Precisely and I think this underscores the value of projects like the skunkworks at Irvine developing compact BEVs. Major projects often get bogged down on product envelopes but I feel like that’s of less importance when you’re not try to build something for everyone. There are certain valuable niche vehicles/segments that Ford should go after and back itself. I do wonder if some of the delays with future BEVs has to do with Ford continually discovering better more efficient ways to design and develop products. Maybe done with fewer impediments exactly because it isn’t trying to chain itself with how it currently builds and uses parts suppliers. Maybe it’s also an evolution process that Ford explains to itself why many of its current staff may not be required in the near future…

Yeah about that, nobody has actually started recycling those massive car batteries yet and I remain unconvinced that any manufacturer is really engaged in anything more than just basic good will propaganda…

Absolutely but the only way out of shifting so many 2023 Mach E is to subvent the whole issue by shoving them into 1) internal fleets, 2) dealer courtesy vehicles and 3) killer leases for retail buyers. I smile at the irony of this situation and the absolute hubris of Ford a year or so ago when it was planning to cut out dealers for the online ordering process, sure they might want to be like Tesla but the truth is that Ford cannot and will not deal directly with customers and their ordering issues.