GearheadGrrrl

Got a chance to sit in an F150 Lighting Electric, and didn't feel motivated to ask for a test drive... Even before I saw the near $100K sticker price. Has all of the problems of full size pickups- too tall, needs a handhold by the B pillar to climb in with proper "3 point contact", huge cab and joke of a bed. Poor protection of underside motors, but the target market doesn't wander far from the malls anyways. And that's before the battery dies and leaves you stranded...

I'm on a couple Transit Connect forums and automatic transmission failures are a daily discussion. A lot of the problem seems to be Ford's "lifetime lubricated" admonishment, folks who change the ATF on them anyways seem to have better luck. The lack of parts and rebuilds drives up the price too- There was a guy who brought some of them back from the dead simply by replacing failed solenoids.

Euro 6 is pretty similar to EPA 2010 except the EPA's NOX standard is much tighter. That and the EPA standard being an oddball as most of the world has gone with the Euro standards has resulted in even Toyota and Isuzu going with Cummins engines instead of their own in the U.S. market. The tougher California standard that is about to take effect is giving Ford compliance problems and EPA 2027 looms, so several manufacturers may be forced to source engines from Cummins in the coming years.

Would need a hood for the North American market, even though that cab covers the engine just fine. Don't know if Ford-Koc's engines can meet EPA 2027 standards, but Cummins would be happy to fix any problems there...

As a Transit Connect owner, a PHEV Transit Custom looks like a great upgrade- More space and thanks to the plug in hybrid feature, no loss in fuel economy!

Would be nice for service access, but passing crash tests might be impossible.

Not going to help us any out here in rural Minnesota. Heck, the Xcel line that feeds us is so inadaquate that two F150 Lightnings plugged in at the same time would cause a blackout!

Subaru's "love" is just theatrics with little to back it up- For example they used to advertise heavily in the GLBT press but refused to commit to non discrimination in employment, while Ford was a pioneer in committing to equal employment opportunity. As for charity, Suburu makes high visibility but relatively small donations while Ford generously supports some of the companies largest nonprofits like Ford Foundation and Ford Fund. And while Suburu uses temps with no benefits to assemble their cars, Ford builds whole cars and is America's largest employer of autoworkers and is indirectly one of the largest providers of health insurance and retirement benefits in America. Suburu ain't even in the same class... Advantage Ford!

Could be that Paccar offered a discount to members of a fuel jobbers association? Out here in the rural midwest Paccar has been offering discounts to members of farm Co-ops and Ford used to offer a small incentive to Farm Bureau members. There are also buying pools like the State of Minnesota, Sourcewell, and the federal government that off pre-negotiated prices for government agencies and non profits.

Heck, they ain't even spun it off like Iveco, CNH, Ferrari, etc., and even then pretty much the same people and funds still own them all.

Teslas are luxury cars? Not with quality that would make pre bankruptcy GM and Chrysler blush!

Not surprising- Ford often fails to use the assets they have. Compare Ford's failures to Honda's car ads which introduce customers to the whole lineup of Honda products from quiet generators to side by sides! Ford has a whole armada of products to use as backdrops for the premier products, why not use them? But for a company that puts a red tractor behind an F series in an expensive ad, I don't expect much...

There's a couple guys autocrossing an ex-police Crown Vic PI, brought it to the national championships this year and on "all season" tires and they didn't quite finish last. They're advocating for a class for the CVPI and other retired police cars on real street tires as a low cost entry point to racing.

Problem is, people will say one thing to a survey and then actually buy something complete different. For example, when the original Mustang was shown to sample groups of potential buyers it bombed. Ford introduced it anyways and they couldn't build them fast enough!

SOP for an in frame overhaul on those and the GM equivalent was to remove the cab, thus many were junked rather than rebuilt and by the 80s few were still on the road. The Louisville was a huge improvement with the taller tilt hood and cab, but still required some gymnastics to work on the back of the engine. Probably the best design was the Mack U model where they offset the cab to the left and Mack's engine was a bit more compact which helps too.

Simple supply and demand- We are trending to overcapacity which will drop prices a bit and could drop EV prices to the point EVs are almost competitive. But given the rising costs of everything else, most automakers are not about to make sustained drops in EV prices.

Probably due to reduced EV sales and production...

Nearest Ford dealer to me is supplied by the city's municipal power system which has their own wind generating capacity and contracts for baseload hydro, wind, and coal with a regional power co-op in the Dakotas. Rates are fairly low but if they go above a certain allowance the rates rise drastically, so it actually paid for them to install a big solar array to handle the peaks. Third closest dealer relies on municipal power too, supplied by the same co-op but the city has natural gas IC generators for backup and peak power. In both cases fast charging even a couple of EVs will put them above their allowance and trigger much higher peak rates as their municipal power supplier has to generate or buy expensive electricity.

Sounds like when Minnesota required emissions testing, suddenly a lot of vehicles were registered to mailboxes in Wisconsin...

Problem is a lot of small rural dealers have already gone deeply in debt to get Ford EV Certified, and a dealer whose showroom has been foreclosed can't sell electric cars or cars, period.

But several automakers are doing quite well in the North American market without big pickups... Are Ford, GM, and Stelantis incapable of profitably making anything else?

The truly clueless are the auto executives who keep pushing these "barn door" trucks- When almost every new car has a CD in the .3s or better there's no reason to make pickups and BOF SUVs "fashion victims" with .4+ CDs just so hey'll look "tough"!

Much of the buyers of T3 and other 21st century cars are "future shocked", clinging to the past and unwilling to give up the icons of their youth decades ago. They're a cult that seriously believes that the fastest cars ever were built in the 1960s and they bid up the prices of 1st gen GT350s into six figures... Despite the fact that the cheapest new 4 cylinder Mustang will blow the doors off that old GT350 on the straightaway, then disappear out of sight after a couple curves. For legacy manufacturers like Ford, these cult followers are both a long term curse and a short term blessing...

That's exactly what GE should have expected, but apparently they don't think that far ahead. Even more amazing given that GE had a sizable business managing fleets for other companies...

In some ways Ford has the same problem as HOG(NYSE)- Build a modern product and not only will your loyal customers not buy it, they'll bad mouth it so nobody else will! Maybe it's a good thing a lot of customers don't know about all the great modern tech underneath their boxy F series...