You do realise that those two statements can be true at the same time,
everything depends on prices and the actual trim mix, the latter becomes
critical to the longevity of the product.
The issue with Fusion is that around 2016, Fields cheapened out on the refresh
and after that, all the high series Titanium buyers abandoned it. After that,
Fusion became a liability and branded a commodity/ price driven purchase
price vehicle. Who else but Ford would complain about its own vehicle
being able to be built 13,000 ways…..those customers never asked for that.
I understand why Ford does certain things but Ford said a while back that
its no interested in building much more than about 2.2 million vehicles until
or unless it could get a better average profit per vehicle. To that end, I think
COVID gave Ford and many other carmakers the opportunity to see how
buyers would react in a constricted market with increased prices. Most
buyers yielded and paid higher prices but now we see an unwinding of
that as manufacturers start overproducing and swelling inventories.
And Ford has every right to command higher prices for vehicles that can
justify it, the thing they need to stop doing is undermining that by sneaky
decontenting on items they thing buyers will never notice are gone.
I like the lights, but based on what we saw with the prototype, I'm really not digging the overall shape. It looks quite awkward and I'll proportioned to my eye. But hopefully it grows on me. I think part of the issue is the lights are rounded, but the overall shape looks to be quite boxy, so it just doesn't look very cohesive.
Ah I see, so with this sort of hybrid setup, you don't really have any of the traditional loads placed on the ICE powertrain that you would on a conventional hybrid setup. Is that correct? Apologies for the misunderstanding on my end.
Could be but searching the internet, there was a post on a New Zealand site, maybe we allow
a bit for optimistic promotion on the one below but it does give us some color on series/parallel
hybrid set up which is probably where the PHEV “Super Hybrid” gets its big power numbers..
If this kind of hybriding works, then maybe this is the future of larger pickups and Utilities,
have batteries and electric motors do more of the power work while the small turbo gas engine
acts like a range extender / run flat protection. I know I haven said that right but hoping that
you understand what I’m thinking…
https://www.ebbett.co.nz/offers/byd-shark-register-your-interest#:~:text=The plug-in hybrid powertrain,to-load capability and AWD.
There are certainly some styling cues on the Chinese edge that are questionable, which tend to be emphasized by chrome trim, but I think they could address some of those pretty easily. I think they need to figure something out with this model. I still think Ford is short on product.
I have said it before, Evos would work here, as is as far as I’m concerned. I think it could spawn a Lincoln coupe SUV as well.
Yea, that and a lot of waste in engineering and production processes. Saw that almost every day for over 20 years when I worked at Ford. The plant managers did the gemba walks in a perfunctory way. CI wasn't taken seriously by upper management.
Ford should fix the process issues before making a decision to exit China.