bzcat

Maybe it will be both Edge and Fusion... Ford will probably call this SUV "Edge" in China because Fusion name is neither known or relevant there and Mondeo is still around as a sedan. And it will be called Mondeo Active in Europe and Fusion Active in North America.

Watch that E-Transit number... Ford sold 975 units of E-Transit out of total 8,567 Transit or around 11% in April. Can't compare the YTD numbers because E-Transit has been on sale for only 2 months. I think this explains the question I asked last month on why there was no typical big spring fleet delivery of Transit to fleet customers this year. A lot of them must have reduced their ICE Transit order and waiting for their EV order to be delivered. I predict the mix of ICE vs. EV Transit will reach 50/50 pretty fast. Perhaps even by the end of this year. Edge is enjoying a reversal of fortune lately. I think supply shortage of Explorer is really boosting Edge. Ranger sales seems to have hit a rough patch... not sure if it is supply related (Ford building more Bronco and less Ranger) or demand related (Nissan Frontier is new and Toyota is pushing Tacoma aggressively)

$36k just to get manual... ?

No reason to think Detroit won't continue building the current Lightning in addition to TE1 in Tennessee. Demand for EV is sky high... Ford will be wise to keep EV production going at sites already setup for EV. Maybe Ford will convert the current Lightning production to only the Pro version aimed at fleets - maybe rename it something else like F-100 and F-200... and move retail customers to the TE1 version F-150. Just one of the possibilities. Once BOC is at full production with TE1, Ford will be able to adjust the mix of the F-150 at the Detroit and Kansas City plants. If EV demand starts to pull away from ICE, Ford can convert Detroit to full EV production for example. This is why Farley is talking about a "new" EV truck. He is telegraphing Ford's intention to keep the current Lightning in production beyond the launch of TE1 F-150 EV.

That's the rebadged Mahindra CUV which was cancelled just a few weeks short of the official debut.

CUV don't have much of a MPG penalty over cars. People didn't abandon cars because of low fuel prices - they stopped buying them because they don't like cars. High fuel prices is not going to change that. People will just buy smaller CUVs if they had to.

I don't think Ford will try another Lincoln truck. I don't see any issue with $100k+ Ford trucks. You can option up some trucks now that reaches $100k so going another 10~15% higher is no that big of a deal. With inflation, you going to get there anyway. The brand is both popular and aspirational when it comes to trucks.

Exactly... Tesla is down 26% YTD - the Twitter thing just happened this week. Tesla has been falling but it has nothing to do with Twitter. You were insinuating that somehow there were related.

Ford Middle East released the new Taurus... which is rebadged Mondeo. Ford had been selling the previous gen Taurus in the Middle East and the new Mondeo is actually about the same size as the previous Taurus and replaced both the old Mondeo and Taurus in China. https://fordauthority.com/2022/04/all-new-ford-taurus-engineered-to-withstand-heat-sand-of-middle-east/

I'm guessing it will be an alternative version of F-150 like GMC Hummer that is aimed at higher end buyer with more performance and bigger price tag. The F-150 Lightning price range is aimed at the mainstream market. Farley is probably thinking $100k+ starting price.

Tesla is dropping with the market. In case you didn't notice, the Dow fell 800 points yesterday and Tesla was down this year even before the Twitter news. One big difference between Ford and Musk... I don't think Musk is an anti-Semite.

They wouldn't also fake the muffler and all the other bits. Also, as already pointed out, this is a prototype - meaning it is wearing production body panel (but camouflaged) and the lower half of it is pretty much identical to Evos. The only substantial difference to Evos is the greenhouse behind the B-pillar. We can speculate what that means but I think safe to say this is not a GE2 mule.

Transit/Tourneo Custom EV teaser... official unveil on May 9, 2022

"Sport" is a appearance package on Ford trucks. I'm guessing it will be Tremor or some other yet to be determined name plate.

I guess the final run-out shipment arrived from India this month. That's about 120 days sales in inventory which will last into late summer and balance of the 2022 model year selling season.

Hyundai Venue starts at $19k which is the only other CUV on the US market that is similar in size to EcoSport. But it is a much newer and appealing design.

I was suprised by the 11k EcoSport inventory. It's kind of hard to see the value of that little turd when Maverick starts at $20k.

The CD6 Mustang was scrapped. S650 is evaluation of S550 so makes sense Ford won't invest a lot of money to get AWD. The AWD rumor started a few years ago when Ford patented the AWD hybrid setup with V8. But that was when S650 was a CD6 program.

But electricity gets cleaner every year, which is the point you won't acknowledge. Coal will be practically eliminated from US grid over the next 15 years as the plants age out and replaced by mostly renewables. But more to the point, burning coal to generate electricity is still more carbon efficient than burning gas or diesel by a significant margin. Go back to my post when I explained the thermal efficiency of ICE vs. power plants. You can't make up the difference between the two. On a global scale, it is way better for us from carbon emission standpoint to keep coal plants than to continue operating millions of gas and diesel engines.

But that's false equivalence. The anti-BEV environmental arguments are propaganda. The pro-BEV environmental arguments are based on facts. Note that I said environmental arguments... I'm not talking about someone's personal preference or infrastructure challenges. BEV is agnostic to power source so as the grid get cleaner, it gets cleaner, and grids do get cleaner every year. If all your electricity comes from renewable sources like in BC (98% per your claim), the carbon emission of your BEV is practically zero. There is no similar argument for ICE - it will continue to emit the same carbon (or more because ICE tends be become less efficient as they age) as long as you own it and drive it. If the grid goes from 50% renewable to 75% renewable, you just reduce the carbon emission of your BEV by 50% - there is no practical way to reduce ICE carbon emission like this over the life of that vehicle. This is a simple concept... BEV has this built in advantage to drastically reduce emission as the grid is cleaned up. The thermal efficiency of natural gas or coal power plant is significantly better than ICE. This concept is also not hard to understand. Would you rather have central heating in your office building that has 1000 rooms or 1000 individual heaters under desks in every room in the office building to achieve the same level of heating? Which one is more efficient? You don't need a study to tell you what is evidently obvious. Millions of tiny power plants (that's what ICE is) is of course more wasteful and produce more emission than a couple of large power plant. The thermal efficiency of ICE is roughly 20% at the high end - meaning the most modern fuel efficient engines converts only 20% of carbon input into energy, the other 80% is wasted as heat and emission. The thermal efficiency of natural gas power plant is between 40 to 60% depending on design and age. Even factoring in transmission lost (which is usually 3 to 5% but could be as much as 7 or 8% in failing grids in some 3rd world country), ICE is emitting at 2 to 3 times more carbon as the power plant. The impact of mining is also a red herring. Fossil fuel is not a magic potion from heaven. It is extracted from the ground - some people call that mining. Since you are Canadian, I'm sure you've seen picture of the oil sand tarpit in Alberta. Let's not pretend only batteries require mining.

Some random observations: Edge sales increases probably reflects shortage of Explorer more than anything. Bronco Sport + Escape combo seems to hold steady. Maverick is already outselling EcoSport so the strategy is working. Curious about the Mach E as well... it's certainly not due to lack of demand as most Ford dealers have long order books and wait lists. When is that production volume increase is supposed to occur? Are F-series sales still down due to chip supply or something else? 47% decline year over year suggests it's more than supply issues. I don't have any guesses on what's driving the freefall, just thinking out loud. Ranger too... 44% decline year over year - I suppose Ford may be shifting production volume over to Bronco but that drop probably indicates more competition than anything else. Nissan returned to the market with a 99% residual lease - that must have had an impact short term. Should keep an eye on this one. The big annual spring delivery of Transit to fleet buyers didn't seem to happen this year - or maybe delayed? Expedition and Navigator sales collapse - gas prices?

RHD conversion is not that difficult. It just cost money that companies like Ford didn't want to spend because volume projection is so low. BTW, this is why GM shut down Holden. Without Vauxhall and GM Korea footing the bill for RHD tooling for dashboard and steering parts etc. It was cost prohibitive for GM to just make them for Australia and New Zealand. Ford is still in Australia mainly because the entire Europe range, Mustang, and Edge are still available in RHD because of UK. Adding US-only trucks and SUVs to RHD only works as long as price premium supports such project - e.g. GM tried to make RHD Acadia for Holden but sales didn't meet expectation and that was basically the final nail on Holden's coffin.

If F-150 RHD is profitable in Australia, I see no reason why Ford Aus wouldn't jump on Bronco next. Like @twintornados mentioned, RHD steering rack already exists in the parts list so it is actually less complicated. I'm sure Ford New Zealand and South Africa will love to join the program too if this project has capacity to spare. If F-150 and Bronco have RHD conversion, plus factory RHD Mustang and Mach E, Ford could have a pretty decent line up in Australia for the first time since Telstar and Laser were yanked out.

Agree, F-150 and Australia seemed like such a natural fit. And honestly, so are Explorer and Bronco but RHD is the challenging hurdle for Ford Australia to clear.

That's probably based on a very low volume projection - i.e. initially when Ram projected to sell only a few hundred a year. The article said the investment in tooling is AUS$10-12 million per vehicle. Let's double that to include compliance costs and other testing. So roughly AUS$22 million. If you can sell 4,000 units a year over 5 years, that's about AUS$1,100 per unit.