GearheadGrrrl

Looks like Ford is joining Isuzu in having their medium duty diesels banned in California.

It says something of the competence of Ford management that they vigorously protect and even recycle names from an era over half of whose inhabitants are dead...

To put that million dollar EV upgrade in perspective, the dealer I bought my last Ford from has an assessed property value of only a million and a half, and they signed up for the EV upgrade. Ford better give these dealers some support or EVs are gonna drive them outa business!

Sounds overly optimistic- There's literally dozens of companies offering fleet management connectivity and software, and most of them work on all brands rather than just Ford. If I were running a fleet I'd be suspicious and just look at this product as another way for Ford to suck my vehicles in to their dealerships for more overpriced and often unneeded repairs!

Nice theory, but in practice... Our towns utility wishes we would go away, 'cause then they wouldn't have to maintain a 20+ mile long line that serves only a couple hundred users. If I put up rooftop solar they'll grudgingly accept its 'cause they have too, but no way will they allow significant inputs on their system here. As for EVs as storage to compensate for the sad state of the "grid", with the unreliability of power here we're not about to share the power of our charged batteries when the power may go out for days!

Land around gas stations is too expensive for solar or wind, so beyond a few solar panels on the roof to virtue signal it won't happen.

But the reality is that electric propulsion will not work for all users. For those of us that live in rural areas or apartments or have heavy stuff to haul renewable fuels make much more sense than electrification. And while even in the U.S. we currently can't produce enough biomass to meet all of our liquid fuel needs, we can cover at least 30% of them and more with current technology. And for the small town gas stations out here that can't even afford to pave their premises, instead of million dollar investments in charging stations renewable fuels can use much of the current gas and diesel infrastructure. Why change your whole vehicle when you just need to change fuels?

A key problem for PHEV and especially EV heavy duty pickups is that they'll be so heavy that even modest loads will push them over the 10K pounds regulatory threshold. The Ramcharger probably has 8 bolt wheels for a reason...

My bias is in favor of electric cars, problem is how to transition to EVs ASAP without bankrupting everyone involved. If Ford can keep those plants running at capacity when they come online and for the next few decades, no problem. But can the market absorb all the batteries and EVs the industry is tooling up to build? Will customers buy enough RVs to keep those plants running at capacity? If not, it may be Ford's turn to visit bankruptcy court.

Ford's mistake was wasting billions to develop an EV only vehicle (Mach-E) that couldn't share it's development cost with IC and Hybrid vehicles. Thus the Mach-E will be probably discontinued without ever turning a profit. Would have been much smarter to build PHEV versions of several Ford models at much lower cost and put off developing a pure EV until it could turn a profit.

That's why Ford would be wise to offer lower profile versions of the Super Duty and Transit that will fit under a 7 foot garage opening.

There is also a substantial market of "virtue signalers", and something that looks like an ordinary F150 won't appeal to them. These are the people that ignored Honda and other's perfectly good hybrids and bought Priu because they had a distinctive look.

Motorcycles sleep in the house!

Most of the reasons the full size pickups series are pretty much a North American market oddity is because Rest Of World's garages can't fit them. America with it's millions of huge homes built after WW2 with huge garages could easily house full size pickups, but new housing in NA is now trending to smaller garages, driveways, and just plain apartments. Might explain why the Maverick sells so well... As for the economics, having lived within my means with 40+ MPG cars I'm now comfortably retired and could buy an F150 or three cash, but why waste my garage on three trucks when I can fit four sports cars!

Sounds great, but is the typical Australian garage big enough to fit an F150?

The only advantage I can see is cost- one less cylinder head, one less set of cams. etc.. With the difficulty of packaging an inline 6 in transverse applications and the V6s left to die, it would doom Ford to future totally dependent on longitudal front engine vehicles- Not a good product mix to be locked in to as buyers shift to smaller vehicles.

An Inline 6 in 2023 begs the question... Why?

Transit Connect aerodynamics are impressive, coast down takes a half mile of so and the rear is well shaped for towing trailers- Pulled a motorcycle on a trailer this weekend and the MPG barely dropped at all.

Ford has a whole real estate section of the company, but they seem to operate more like a benevolent estate manager than a profit making operation. For example, TCAP closed in 2011 but demolition and ultimately selling to a developer took a decade- That's a long time to be paying taxes on an unproductive big city property surrounded by expensive homes. Last I heard Ford still owns a farm acquired by Henry near Detroit, and the payback on the Detroit railroad station rehab will probably take a century or more.

I have too many bad memories of medium duty trucks with hydraulic brakes... I want air brakes on the truck and trailer!

But in the rural market I live in pushing EVs is counter productive- First we have to sell customers on PHEVs in familiar packaging, and after people take a liking to that little taste of electrification they'll go EV next decade. The market for EVs and even PHEVs is even worse in urban neighborhoods where the majority of the housing is rental and often with street parking only- Parking lot and on street chargers are too expensive for landlords to invest in and public funded curb side chargers will get plundered for copper if they don't get run over first!

Actually I'm quite pro-EV, I just realize the reality that trying to force them on people they won't work for will backfire. For me an EV works if I can get the after rebate price down under $10K, so I'll be watching that one in Mankato!

We're almost to the "can't give them away" point out here- Dealer in Mankato, a college town of about 50K population, has a new Leaf discounted down to the mid $20Ks. The few people and organizations that have invested in EVs, charging, etc. out here largely got burned and they're warning all their friends and enemies. I dipped my toes into battery storage and solar with a $3K investment, unit doesn't work correctly and "support" won't even talk to me so that hundred pounds of HazMat will be disposed of at Costco's returns counter. This is the 2020s version of what GM did to diesel passenger cars- The technology has been pushed out before it's mature and the "evangelists" have only worsened the growing hatred of EVs. Would have been wiser to evolve through PHEVs and biofuels before electrics, but with the EV backlash that's building it will be had to sell even a simple hybrid out here for years.

Just did a search for new EVs on cars.com and about 80% of them within 250 miles of my southwest Minnesota home are at small town dealers... This isn't going to go over well with those small town dealers!

Cummins does hydrogen fuel too, Daimler is already a customer.