Farley is enamoured with CE1 because it gives him something to reset the vision of BEVs as affordable and closer to what more people will pay, he’s painting a lot of blue sky with this to cover the huge losses/ write downs coming for BOC next year    The big question is what does Fird do with the rest of its products to keep them fresh and bringing in profits.

Tanks for the power steering example, it shows what happens when Ford goes another direction, so we may see even more wild decisions depending on the level of chaos.   Theres even more uncertainty (I should have said chaos) today because the government keeps changing thins like tariffs and tax credits so even existing long term assets and plans may be in jeopardy    The only products that remain reliable for Ordinary are the local manufactured in USA vehicles but even then, the supplier base is an utter mess

The fact that Farley is head over heels for this thing, and the fact that we know CE1 was designed to accommodate sedans if they wanted to makes me hope Ford might offer something similar one day.    But I think you hit the nail on the head. Too many brands have for too long tried to squeeze every last bit of money out of consumers, maximizing quarterly profits with no mind on how taking advantage of consumers would make many of them turn on them in the future. Jay Mays once said a good looking car costs about as much to design and manufacture as an ugly car. It's not like these brands have to charge significantly more money for a visually appealing design, but they do anyways.    It's clear the key for EV adoption is making them so enticing for the price that they're almost so good that you can't afford not to buy them. Making a product so compelling that it persuades more consumers to take a chance on EVs. That includes design. So many affordable, small cars are generic, or ugly. There's a real market opportunity to create affordable cars that look great, are well built, and rewarding to engage with. Give these consumers a product that doesn't make them feel like they're being punished for having less money, and it would sell like gangbusters. 

That's the thing, capex plans involving time horizons like that in the auto industry are always fraught with uncertainty. I worked at the Ford steering systems plant in Indianapolis in the 1990s and 2000s, when major capital expenditures on new infrastructure were planned for the facility.   10 years later, this is what remained of the plant:   As I mentioned earlier, there's no such thing as "settled times" in this industry

Hopefully COVID and other things have taught companies not to put all of their eggs into a single basket. 

For what its worth-   The Chinese market is going to be a shit show over the next 3-5 years. They are in a major demographic decline with 50% of the population being over the age of 50, Other Countries like Germany, South Korea, Japan and Russia are on the same path. The USA is about 10-15 years behind them.    I can see outsiders like EU and US based companies getting squeezed out of that market sooner than later, but at the same time both the EU and USA will protect their markets from dumping.   Then if CCCP decides that Taiwan is worth the squeeze, they'll basically destroy their economy with economic impact that will cause...and that will be happening sooner then later. 

Ford brass has already decided about importing vehicles from China, it only works for Lincoln. The biggest hurdle remains tariffs making any imported Chinese Fords way too expensive to sell.

Yea, exactly. Some Honda dealers are apparently oblivious to this reality. For comparison a Tesla Model 3 Performance (way better than this glorified Civic coupe in every way) is $56,630.  

Is Scaringe pushing for the sunset of incentives given to the oil and gas industry, like the head honcho of Tesla?   "While Elon Musk has always maintained that he prefers a market with no EV tax credit, he also emphasized that he supports the rollback of any incentives given to the oil and gas industry. The Trump administration has not done this so far, instead focusing on the expiration of the $7,500 EV tax credit at the end of the third quarter." 

Have Lincoln dealers outside China really asked for a new sedan for its product lineup? As with the Mondeo, Lincoln Z (previously called Zephyr) isn't a strong seller in China, its largest market. What good would it do Lincoln dealers or FoMoCo to sell an anonymous boring unibody sedan like Lincoln Z elsewhere?