GearheadGrrrl

The current Navigator is basically an F series 5 door and the restyling to make it look like a Lincoln makes it probably the ugliest F series variant, while the added mass to bring it up to the Lincoln "luxury" image and the extended extended cab pushes it's weight up to around 3 tons. While the Ecobeast V6 tries it's hardest, with such mass to drive around it's performance only excels in maybe towing ability, and fans of the Ford V8s would question that. The Navigator's potential as a performance vehicle, already crippled, is buried by it's high center of gravity. While substituting the F150 Lightnings EV battery and drivetrain will lower that CG a bit, it'll probably end up being a 4 ton SUV and that added mass will undo any COG benefit of the EV drivetrain. And while a more aerodynamic front end would help, the Navigator still has to make a big hole through the atmosphere and it's added mass compared to it's F150 Lightning brother don't help either. I've yet to see an F150 Lightning at an autocross, track day, or even rallycross, and given the Navigator's only 20K or so annual sales I don't expect o see many anywhere... And does a $75K product really make much if any profit at 20K a year volume?

Aerodynamic efficiency is much more critical in an EV- On an IC it's easy to add power to make up for bad aero or simply. offer better performance, while on an EV high battery costs drive the demand for excellent aerodynamics.

If EV charging was everywhere and cheap, CD might not matter much. But right now allowing .01 more CD means a few miles less range and easily another thousand dollars in battery costs.

Often the problem is managers who let their friends get away with stuff while they get obsessed with trying to fire the workers they have a personal beef with. As for attendance, if the company has a legal policy and enforces it fairly those are easy cases for management to win- Either the worker was there or they weren't, either they had leave or they didn't.

The shortage of workers is worldwide= Cheap workforces are disappearing and companies won't have cheap workers to exploit to make up for their mismanagement.

I wonder if Ford is going ahead with BEV in Canada because they figure if it fails, Canada is more likely to give them a bailout?

One of the maxims of the auto industry is that to turn a profit on low to medium price cars you need to build them at around a car a minute line rate for two shifts and one shift just to break even. But having shut down Fusion production that was running better than that break even line rate, Ford is repeating the mistake by permanently shutting down Edge production to spend hundreds of millions to build an EV when Ford NA's dedicated EV, the MME, has yet too and will probably never turn a profit.

Sure has a big grille for an EV and those low door bottom lines don't leave a lot of room for a "skateboard" battery...

I already know that, what's significant is that it's called Golf 9 instead of ID 2 or something like that after VW told us their would be no Golf 9. As for Golf 9 being a dedicated BEV, VW hasn't given us enough detail of the car to tell for sure.

Skateboard platforms are best when you want a long range BEV with no off road ability and can sell at least a couple hundred thousand a year. Ford currently has no BEV selling in those volumes, and is concentrating on "off road" capable vehicles and trucks for the foreseeable (from "glass house") future. Ford could fill half the pickup box on an F series with batteries and half the customers wouldn't notice, never mind between the frame rails and such. As for the "transmission tunnel", most of them in my fleet are transverse and could just as well host batteries and either or both IC or EV drivetrains. Looking at the underside of my VW MQB platform Golf 7 TDI, it's pretty obvious it's designed to be built as an BEV, Hybrid, and several flavors of IC. Given how slowly VW's dedicated "ID" BEVs are selling, it's no surprise VW is moving away from dedicated BEVs and hedging it's bets on flexible powered platforms- Within the last few months VW has announced both a Golf 8.5 with IC and hybrid power and similar looking Golf 9 BEV. VW makes many more vehicles than Ford and is concentrated on the auto market while Ford is concentrating on trucks. If VW is having a hard time justifying dedicated BEVs, how can Ford justify new dedicated BEV platforms?

Hmmm... The "Heavy Duty" market is a small one for Ford, so unless they're planning a major expansion this looks like virtue signaling to maybe get back on the "most ethical companies" list. Cummins and collaborator Eaton are heavily invested here, as Cummins is rolling out spark ignition versions suitable for gasoline, natural gas, and hydrogen fuels and are far enough along that they'll be demonstrating their gasoline fueled B series at Work Truck Week. Cummins has EPA 2027 compliance in hand with new versions of their diesel 7, 10, and 15 liter engines, International's Traton S13 is probably compliant, and a Volvo Truck fanboy tells me their 13 liter will be compliant. But is Daimler's Detroit Diesel ready for any fuels in 2027? And while International and Volvo may have the 13 liter diesel slot filled, have they anything in the pipeline who want bigger or smaller engines and/or alternative fuel capability? Good thing Cummins is expanding capacity...

So as long as Ford is betting a few billion $$$ on small cheap EVs, why not hedge those risky bets with hybrid versions of the platform?

Could be that a major dealer has gotten aggressive on bid pricing, possibly with Ford's assistance. Used to see this around Minnesota when Boyer Ford dominated the fleet market here.

I've been seriously tempted to buy a Maverick, but needed a couple feet more cargo length so I bought Transit Connect instead.

Maybe accessorizing is popular on the Maverick because after buying one they can still afford accessories?

Shrinking garage size is a trend the domestic pickup makers are missing- In new construction townhouses have been trending over single family for years, and condo garages are smaller- Thus the market for full size pickups and related BOF SUVs is shrinking while higher prices are pusher buyers to longer loans and ownership cycles. For the domestic pickup makers that have been comfortably lounging in their "chicken tax" created fortress, the market is shrinking while they have factories and UAW workers to keep busy. It gets worse- Drive through any older suburb at 3am and the driveways in front of the two car attached garages are full and parts of the streets too as multi generation families have turned those double garages into bedrooms. If on street parking is banned driveway space is at a premium and buying an Edge instead of Explorer can mean one more car can fit in the driveway, and at "shift change" less family members will have to sit in a car on the street waiting for a driveway parking space. The world and even America is changing. The Japanese and Korean makers get it, Ford not so much...

IMSA TV covers most of their races, but they sell the video for the more popular races to NBC/Peacock who add their own commentators and of course, ads. Problem is, they aren't clever enough to run the ads during yellow flag slowdowns, etc. but instead rudely interrupt the race coverage anytime they please. I'm a paid NBC/Peacock subscriber but it got so bad during the 24 hour race that I watched on imsa.tv through a free VPN outside the US.

IIRC the Feds go by when the engine assembly started- Navistar gamed this a few years ago when they were having trouble meeting next years standards by parking a bunch of engine blocks in the parking lot, laying on main bearings and cranks, and calling that the date of assembly.

An 8.3 liter diesel for HD pickups and even up through Class 6 would buck the trend to smaller engines... Maybe GM plans to move back up into Classes 7 and 8?

But thanks to the malingering "Chicken Tax", neither maker VW or Ford are likely to bring it here.

The "dealership experience" gets pretty ridiculous at times, like the wall the local VW/Audi dealer had to build through the middle of the dealership to separate the VW and Audi sides, including separate waiting rooms. I checked, coffee and cookies are the same on both sides. In bigger markets it gets even more ridiculous, with whole separate showrooms and lots next to each other and an attitude to match in the upmarket showrooms. I look like an elder farmer's wife, small town dealers get that but in places like Naples, Florida I've been challenged while wandering through the same dealer's Audi and Mercedes showrooms while waiting for my VW to be serviced... They'd probably call the cops if I wandered into their Porsche store! If I was a small business owner shopping for a Sprinter I would have driven straight from that Mercedes dealer to the Ford store for a Transit. We've got a lot of elder women here that are unassuming millionaires due to farmland appreciation, like our last City Clerk who still worked for us part time in her 80s until she had to quit for health reasons. Fortunately the local Ford dealer didn't chase her out of the Lincoln corner of their showroom when she bought her Lincoln.

Got tired of Peacock's dumping of ads in the middle of the race and seeing too much of their commentators so I switched to watching IMSA's own feed through a VPN. Besides better and less constructive commentary they had cameras in several cars- Watched the Mustang for several hours and was impressed by how smoothly and seemingly effortlessly the Mustangs turned repeated fast laps.

Lap times were competitive too, running similar weights and restrictors to Corvette and the much more expensive euro and asian competitors they matched their lap times!

Got not one but two Lincoln/Ford dealers within 50 miles, Cadillac and the luxury imports are at least 70 miles away. Nice to have the dealers, too bad they don't have anything like a Caddy CT4/5, BMW M2, and Audi RS to sell.

The automakers have their own or access to cold weather test sites in northern Minnesota and Ontario, so my guess is this is some short notice testing on a convenient route. See a lot of this- 'Bout 10 years ago I talked with a couple hispanic guys stopped at a McDonalds in Iowa City, they were driving a like new VW Anorak TDI pickup and spoke excellent English. This was when VW Group was romancing International Trucks, and Iowa City is a good turnaround point for a day trip out of International HQ in suburban Chicago. Around the same time pictures showed up of Scania trucks with International's manufacturer plates around the Chicago area. VW Group has since swallowed International whole and spun it off as Traxon, and Scania has a huge social media presence in North America that leads me to suspect they're bringing the Scania brand here.