'21 October Sales

[fuzzymoomoo]

On 11/3/2021 at 9:01 PM, akirby said:

I agree.  I think they’ll be happy selling whatever they can make in Hermosillo on 3 shifts for the near future.  Same for MAP.  Minimal incentives.

FWIW I'm not hearing anything about a third shift here right now but the union did tell us they have to give us minimum 14 hay's notice. 

[rperez817]

On 11/3/2021 at 1:51 PM, bzcat said:

I think Farley enjoys selling cars at MSRP too much to want to add more supply.

 

Yes sir, I remember Farley saying that some of Ford's U.S. sales and marketing goals from now on are.

1. Keep "days supply" of new vehicles below 50 days
2. Encourage retail consumers to do sold orders, including incentives that make a sold order less expensive than purchasing the same new vehicle from dealer stock
3. Minimize or eliminate customer cash/rebates and similar sales incentives

Farley is very serious about emphasizing sales quality over sales quantity.

Edited November 5, 2021 by rperez817

[jasonj80]

20 hours ago, jpd80 said:

There is talk from VW that MEB is proving costly to build compared to Tesla and some Chinese brands, so I wonder how this will affect Ford’s profitability buying into a toolkit that’s aging and perhaps behind the curve in terms of costs and battery tech by the time it arrives. Hopefully, Ford is getting the evolved and upgraded version of VW’s technology.

Part of that comes from the Unions demanding worker levels be maintained. It takes VW 30 hours to build an electric car. It is going to take Tesla 10 hours at their new German factory. VW's Union in Germany is at odds over Wolfsburg currently because they only built 500K units there last year and they said they would be 850K, they just tried to oust the CEO over the reduced hours to build vehicles and reduction in employment that is going to follow with electric vehicles.

This industry is changing and changing faster than it ever has, if you don't adapt now you will be out of business. Farley sees this more than any other Traditional Auto CEO, If changing pisses off your existing customers so be it that is not where your future is. He realizes that "GM and Chrysler" aren't the only competition and you don't just need to be better than them which is different than has been said in this town for the last 70+ years. 

[rperez817]

3 hours ago, jasonj80 said:

This industry is changing and changing faster than it ever has, if you don't adapt now you will be out of business. Farley sees this more than any other Traditional Auto CEO, If changing pisses off your existing customers so be it that is not where your future is. 

 

Most definitely jasonj80 sir. Farley has vision, and is the right person to bring Ford into the "new world" of the automotive industry, to use a phrase from Jim Hackett in 2019.

 

I think Ford held a Town Hall type event for employees early this week where Farley emphasized the "adapt or die" choice that Ford, and Ford employees, must make.

Edited November 5, 2021 by rperez817

[jpd80]

6 hours ago, jasonj80 said:

Part of that comes from the Unions demanding worker levels be maintained. It takes VW 30 hours to build an electric car. It is going to take Tesla 10 hours at their new German factory. VW's Union in Germany is at odds over Wolfsburg currently because they only built 500K units there last year and they said they would be 850K, they just tried to oust the CEO over the reduced hours to build vehicles and reduction in employment that is going to follow with electric vehicles.

This industry is changing and changing faster than it ever has, if you don't adapt now you will be out of business. Farley sees this more than any other Traditional Auto CEO, If changing pisses off your existing customers so be it that is not where your future is. He realizes that "GM and Chrysler" aren't the only competition and you don't just need to be better than them which is different than has been said in this town for the last 70+ years. 

There’s a bit of a nonsense factor in that 30 hrs vs 10 hrs example, traditional carmakers build excess shells in body and paint so that line speeds can be maintained even if upstream processes are disrupted for a short time. Tesla obviously wants to keep workers to a minimum in body and paint with a direct throughput system which works with lower line speeds. The best part is that Tesla forces other manufacturers to look at their construction process and question decades of progression, are we doing enough, are we making things too complex in our offline processes?

 

VW, Ford and GM assumed that they would have a walk up start to BEVs with their their ICE manufacturing knowledge over to “easier to build” BEVs, all are now realising that marriage of EV skateboard to top hat brings new challenges in manufacturing efficiency and passing on every new cost is not an option.  The Americans are on safer ground with bigger BEVs that can carry higher prices but VW in European going up against Tesla? they better bring their A Game.