When I bought an F-150 Lightning, its performance made the V8 F-150s I owned previously not so cool anymore 😄

Some think it’s still the 80s and turbos suck.  Some think only V8s are cool.  Most are used to the 2.7 in edge and nautilus and drive like a bat out of hell so the 2.0 is slow by comparison.  

Yea, Europe has been a sore spot for Ford in that regard but the situation isn't much better in the U.S. Hopefully the skunkworks will pay off sooner rather than later in terms of Ford adding BEV models to keep up with the competition

Eh, they've let their cars and SUVs languish with long product cycles, especially in Europe, vs. competitors that have kept ICE products up to date (and adding models) while also adding BEV models.

You're both wrong. It's clearly inspired by this beauty. 

The front of this looks ok. The back is a fucking disaster. As an aspiring designer myself, I can't stand it when an otherwise somewhat decent design is ruined because someone wanted to get "quirky". In this case, with the taillight placement. 

I could rant about this all day long, but it's the state of design education that's to blame. What do I mean? As someone who's visited car design schools in person and mingled with that crowd, I can tell you there are some genuinely awesome car people. But you also have a ton, and I mean a TON of the pretentious art snobs.    Car design schools are also insanely expensive, 300k in student loans expensive. Which means a good portion of the people who go there come from wealth, not all, but again, a lot of them. The education itself is also all about being different, do weird shit. Just look at the design proposals students make and you'll see what I mean. If you made something classically beautiful, you'd be thrown out of the program.    So how does that get us here? It means our cars are styled by mostly wealthy people who can't relate to average consumers and what they want, and who want to make things look weird for the sake of weird, because that's what they were taught to do. We need to rethink the world of design education imo. 

Idk, they haven't really killed most of their ICE models. According to ExplorerDude, the next gen escape is being developed as a ICE or hybrid model alongside whatever the CE1 utility is. Which is interesting, because I thought the CE1 utility was effectively the escape replacement. Beyond edge, there really isn't a segment of profitable ICE cars that Ford isn't competitive in right now.    It's not like they killed their entire ICE lineup. 

That's fair.  I also hate this 

This is exclusively for China and excludes the US and Europe.    Something about a massive war on the continent, driving energy prices, and cost of living through the roof has something to do about it.      These Electric costs increases are driven by the war in Ukraine and commiserate increases in Natural Gas costs.  According to the majority of reviews the cost of EV ownership are much lower than ICE vehicles, Espcially if you charge at home or work.  https://www.motorfinity.uk/blog/cost-of-running-electric-car/     I think the biggest differentiator is Urbanization, GDP per Capita, Education, and Political Leanings. After all, California is a large state.  In Ohio, we have a number of anti-EV state policies and little commitment from the State to deploy chargers.    Ford Allowed their ICE lineup to Languish before they declared their move toward EVs; in the Case of their ICE cars in the EU, sales were collapsing due to market conditions and underinvestment in their mainstream vehicles (Fiesta, Focus, and Kuga). the move to BEVs gave them a reason to kill them off.    I find EVs to be more convenient to live with than ICE cars, charging at home is more convenient than a gas station, no oil changes, Transmission Flushes, Etc.  There is an inverse relationship between gas prices and electricity costs when it comes to  EV penetration.  BEVs will be cheaper to build than ICE vehicles; the more EVs, the higher the cost of Electricity and the lower the cost of gas.  For the EU with High Gas prices and Rising Electrical costs, the introduction of cheap Chinese EVs can reverse the decline in EV sales. While in the US the absence of significant Taxes on fuel, increasing EV penetration will make ICE cars Cheaper to run, while electrical prices will increase. In the US, the absence of substantial taxes on fuel and increasing EV penetration will make ICE cars cheaper.  Overall, Cheaper EVs, and better infrastructure will speed EV market penetration.