My Buddy has a Wrangler 4XE and has been going through all the BS that has entailed with that. He's been pretty much a life long jeep owner..maybe he'll buy a Bronco next LOL  

I'm shocked at the pricing difference between the F-150 and Bronco Raptors vs the Ranger Raptor-the Ranger Raptor is actually affordable 

Yeah its far cheaper and you get more eyes on a product that way vs a car show. Car shows are just about useless these days because the whole game has changed, for better or worse. 

Quite correct and as an example, Ecosport was last sold in 2022 with price range of $22K to $28K…… Today that would probably be $26K to $32K which is Compact prices.

A lot of the Ford lifers and other "average" employees are profoundly unproductive given the skunkworks newbies produce 20 times more per capita!   ...a team of roughly 500 employees, most of whom work out of a secretive office in Long Beach, California, geographically and organizationally removed from Ford’s Michigan operations. Field stressed the importance of identifying and attracting 20x contributors—individuals who produce 20 times more than an average employee—with many engineers hired from California tech companies such as Tesla, Rivian, and Apple, among others.

Nah, I don't think so. Ford is hiring for its BlueOval Battery Park Michigan plant, which will produce low (or lower) cost LFP batteries.  

I was talking to someone on the Ford Licensing side for the Mustang - Warner Bros. (owner of the Bullett name) has increased licensing fees to atmospheric levels.  The cost Warner Bros. presented to Ford is actually eye watering - way over and beyond what Ford paid to Shelby for the GT350 and GT500 names.

Apologies, I meant mid-cycle

What, Ford gave up on making low cost batteries?

Amen my friend! As I mentioned a couple months ago, wouldn't it be somethin' if in a few years the brand that's best known for bringing EV to the masses is Ford? Not Tesla, not GM, not BYD? And by the same token, wouldn't it be incredibly destructive to Ford's future (and incredibly sad) if this so called "Model T moment" fails?   At this point, the big shots at Ford that manage CE1 products and all of the components and production processes for Universal Electric Platform and Universal Electric Production System must embrace the philosophy of NASA Mission Control from the Apollo 13 era, which Gene Kranz made famous: