Orion Bus was built at the old Oneida County airport. Locally to me and I had lots of friends that worked there. It was located there so that Western Star could take advantage of "NYS built" incentives but as usual, that all dried up with new administrations and of course, the plant was closed.

Indeed, external constraints force decisions to suit the situation?   Maybe Ford has that contingent but is waiting until the last moment to announce this in case Tariff issue suddenly change again…..   The last thing corporates like Ford need is constant change  with the rules….  

I wonder if they can add F150 production for domestic consumption if the tariffs continue?

And if the pan with CE1 doesn’t work, Ford will have a contingent hybrid to EREV plan ready to roll out before 2028. It will take the learning from CE1 and apply them to its ICE based vehicles to reduce costs while making more efficient vehicles. Im waiting for another shoe to drop at Oakville, Ford is treading water with SD plan but don’t be surprised if this changes again given the Canada-USA trade issues. Production volume and costs means that the business plan won’t work but is it now too late to change again?        

Volume is still small enough (as well as profits) that it won’t be a huge problem.  What matters is that they nail them when they do get them to market.   What is far more of a problem is Ford’s lack of hybrid crossovers over the next 2-3 years.

Different market, different buyers, different economics.

What competition? ? 😎

2028 should be a new gen. If it is just another facelift, it will fall behind the competition for sure. 

My guess is the delay was due to strong demands for Bronco Sport and Maverick which means Ford didn't need the van volume to maintain production efficiency.   2028 timing also suggest it maybe based on the next gen C2 instead of current gen. Bronco Sport Mk2 should be out by that time as well.       

In all fairness, the Western Star deal included their plant in Kelowna B.C. and Orion Bus with their plants in Ontario and New York.  That accounts at least in part for the much higher price.     I think it's inaccurate to say that Freightliner (or rather DTNA) approached and somehow coerced Ford into selling their heavy truck operation for pennies.  Ford very clearly wanted out of the heavy truck business for two primary reasons, first low profits, and second, they wanted to convert KTP to exclusive production of the upcoming Super Duty line of light trucks.  I was told at the time this was all happening Ford was very close to including all medium duty trucks in the deal (they were built at KTP as well), but made a last-minute decision to keep the F series medium duty in production in Escobedo Mexico.  The Freightliner deal did include the Cargo series medium duty trucks.     The Acterra line used the former Ford cab on a Freightliner chassis, and later versions of the Cargo were built on Freightliner FL 60/70 chassis.  The Acterra was a close approximation to the HN80 medium duty F series replacement Ford was planning for sometime around 1999.      Ford didn't break out class 8 sales from class 6 and 7 sales back in those days, but by 1996 Ford's class 8 share by itself was very small and shrinking.  Ford's strength was in medium duty and class 7 vocational.  Freightliner was primarily after those vocational class 7 sales as they were weak in that specific area.  Freightliner also wanted the dealer network and the Ford parts business was icing on the cake.  The one part of the deal Freightliner was perhaps less excited about was Ford's over-the-road class 8 business, as that was a market Freightliner was particularly strong it.  In fact, Ford had shown a prototype HN80 long-nose OTR conventional model was to have replaced the Louisville LTL as Ford's flagship heavy truck, but Freightliner dropped the program and focused Sterling on vocational and fleet truck sales.   To this day I have wondered what happened to the 2 long nose HN80 prototypes that were supposedly built.  There were pictures of one of them taken at a commercial truck show in late 1996.