Yes but only the vehicle concept was sped through in three months, engineering the vehicle took relatively shorter time because most of the Eng/dev is based on C2 Transit Connect floorpan and other C2 electrical and mechanical modules and suppliers, so basically a new tophat combined with US Escape powertrains.   Recall issues are due poor quality of parts supplied either by external suppliers  or Ford own power train. A lot of Maverick’s major issues are also share with Escape/Corsair.     Back to CE1 development and yes, I agree that we still to seen how the market takes to  those vehicles. It is surprising that Jim Farley would share the actual cost savings developing the vehicles (30% of normal) and I’m under no illusion that this is just Jim Farley’s latest bag of “magic beans”……   What the CE1 team did is take in external knowledge of best practice from companies like Tesla and BYD, If you want to compete with those companies, at least start at the same cost and manufacturing base.    

I see a lot of the new Tacoma in that rendering. 

Chevy now calls it Sidewinder mode. 😀.  Every manufacturer using 4-wheel steering seems to want to use a different name, as if that changes function.  Maybe it’s protected name.   Anyway, I recall reading that owners of the original Quadrasteer often loved it, but cost was too high for mass adoption.  Don’t know if that was real reason.  In any case the crab walk feature could improve parking in tight places, and more importantly, I can imagine rear-wheel steering capability could be very useful when backing up trailers.  To me it sounds like a potentially good idea but it comes down to cost.  Does it add enough value to justify added cost and complexity when normal steering is good enough most of the time?  Another example of why vehicles are so expensive today.

As I understand it the crab walk feature is restricted to low speed maneuvering. I can't see any reason for the crab walk other than showboating on the lake as you perform flank maneuvers driving to your ice fishing house.

Just saw a GMC truck ad and I think it's only available with EV's, but it features 4-wheel STEERING! I thought GM gave up on that a while back. The rear wheels turn in the opposite direction of the front at low speed, while at high speed they turn in the same direction. I don't know where the break-off point is. Is it a way to get customers to go electric? Personally I think you'd see hundreds perhaps thousands of accidents because I don't think motorists could adapt to the change in handling!  One example is lane changing at high speed. The 4 wheel steering will send you into the lane you're aiming for sooner, possibly causing the motorist already in that lane to brake. This is why whenever possible, I take a half mile or longer to make the lane change because it sends me farther ahead of that other vehicle. Unless you're scurrying to take an exit, there's no need to get into the new lane within 100 feet!  Try it sometime.      

Before we give the CE1 team any trophies, let's see the results first. No doubt, the "book of knowledge" may not be the most efficient way to do things, but those lessons were learned over time and fine-tuned.  Look at how many people were happy with the Mavericks' speed of development, yet look at the recall history of the first 3 years.   HRG

I haven’t given this much thought until now. The world knows with Trump in the white house we have at LEAST 4 years of Chinese brand cars being barred from import to the US so why the rush to beat them at their own game?

How about a sign on the window saying, "There's a bomb planted in this vehicle and I'm standing across the street with a remote control device. Go ahead, make my day!"

I currently have 28,000 miles on my Navigator. The rear brake pads were worn down to 1mm and the fronts were worn down about 75%. The front rotors were heat scorched. I trailer about 10% of the mileage and generally do not brake that hard. We are in TX, so conditions are typically hotter. Anyone else have these issues?   I decided to fix this correctly and install the Powerstop K8026-36 kit for towing. This includes front and rear slotted and drilled rotors and high performance brake pads. The kit was just under $500 on Amazon and my mechanic charged $200 for the installation. I expect this will solve the problem, but only time will tell. I thought this was a better option than going with OEM again that would likely have the same issue or cheep after market. I had a similar problem on my 2008 Sequoia and this solved the problem (Toyota later admitted to the problem and retrofitted additional brake cooling).   Anyone else experience this issue?