Ford is way behind demand for hybrids (Maverick and Escape). I don’t think Ford ditches the 1.5 - it gets great mileage and the NVH complaints seem to be way overblown.
I don’t know if it will ever see the light of day, but if it does, why wouldn’t it it go in mainstream Mustangs? It probably wouldn’t be any larger than the 5.0 and if it’s OHV, it would be smaller and considerably cheaper to build.
I doubt the new Escape is much more profitable than the old (before the chip shortage screwed every thing up). Production is still heavily biased to the SE models and the 2020 models had $3K to $5K rebates.
The only significant change at that time was the new center stack with the large screen and Sync 4. The panel directly in front of the driver still has the same 2 screens on each side of the speedo (which was shared with the 2013 - 2020 Fusion).
I’m not sure what you mean by premium, but price-wise Escape and BS are very close when you add all wheel drive to Escape. In fact, the Escape S is more expensive than the base BS model as is the Titanium Escape when compared to the premium BS models.
Ford can’t just build what it wants to, it has to build vehicles that can be sold at a profit. It has sold maybe 25,000 BEV vehicles to date (I’m not counting the EV Focus) - seems like a huge gamble to basically give up introducing new ICE vehicles in the short run. I don’t see enough BEV sales in the next 6 - 8 years to make this plan succeed.
You make some good points. Ford has plenty of capacity to build a new Edge if they had decided to - the Escape plant could probably turn out 100,000/year and Flat Rock probably double that amount. Ford isn’t capacity constrained- the issue is excess capacity.
No reason Ford cant do both. You keep trying to compare potential profit of Ford’s well past their prime sedans with brand new designs which is apples to oranges. You don’t think a class leading C2 Fusion wouldn’t have higher ATP’s than Maverick (and probably Bronco Sport also)? It really doesn’t matter I suppose with no new Fusion coming.
The point is, if the grid can’t handle electrical demand with basically 0% electric cars, what will keep it from collapsing when electric cars are a significant % of the national fleet?
Hope it misses you guys, but that doesn’t look likely now. It looks like it may be a Tropical Storm and not a Hurricane, so at least that would be good.
Flat Rock or the Escape plant? I think a significant number of small CUV buyers will buy a truck that is priced similarly to the CUV as the Maverick is. Until Maverick pick-ups have been too expensive.