Wow, sounds like Ford has a major culture problem.

 

Just wanted to point out one thing on the flag waving. You cannot judge how "american made" a car/truck is based on content. Dont forget how many people work in Product Development to get the vehicle from an idea to a product. One other thing is you need to look at the VALUE of components.. If all of your interior trim pieces, excluding seats, come from say China (total value say of $250 and a good 50 parts) vs the Engine/Trans, 2 parts probably $2k, which is more important to have? The parts the workers make $5/hr to produce or the ones that are skilled and get paid more along the lines of $20-30/hr?

Wanted to keep the Way Forward in there too.. because I agree with your statement 100%

 

I agree with your point about the content....but it seems like lately the domestic autos have been pushing the 'Amercian Pride' campaigns when none of them are truely American anymore. I just think they should stop campaigning the "Buy American" idea and focus on engineering and building cars that are desirable. I seriously doubt that the American towns that surround foreign car plants that support the entire population (directly and indirectly) feel unAmerican for buying the car built at that plant because of the emblem on the hood. I feel that advertising "American Made" should be backed up by actually building American made products. Toyota has just as much a right to state American Made as Ford in a lot of cases.......so why mention it at all?

Ford has internal culture issues that need fixing and the products currently offered are an extension of that core issue. Fix that problem and the products created will be hotter than hot. Ford doesn't have a shortage on talented creative designers.....they have a shortage of long-term thinking middle management and a surplus of bean counters.

 

I agree with the American Made thing and why it keeps comming to the forefront is pure and simple marketing.. If you say it then it's true (even if 1% of the car is made here, it's still american made).

I also agree with the interal issues, I see them every day. I do not agree with the bean counter assessment (I am a bit biased as I am one), most people are not aware how much money it costs to launch a new product, especially a brand new product. My job is getting future programs launched all the way to Job 1 of that vehicle. If there we no bean counters, not a name to call a finance person BTW , we wouldn't have to worry about Ford because it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. It is also us finance people who have to bring a hint of sanity to some of the ideas marketing comes up with.

 

It's true that launching any vehicle is an extremely expensive operation. My comment about bean counters comes from my experience in engineering where MCR's are given waaaaay too much weight in the programs approval process. What good is it to remove $0.19 from the visor assy by eliminating a mirror (which is far more valuable in the consumers eyes) and then have to throw thousands of $$$ on the hood just to sell the car (not only because of visor cheapness). I understand the cost analysis is done far ahead of actual launch of the product.....but I think the domestic big 3 should have learned some lessons over the last 3 years. Just because an MCR looks great on paper and helps a program meet a budget doesn't intrinsically mean it's the right choice. Of course NVH issues seem to always occur when materials are down graded through MCR actions. Then everyone scrambles to fix the NVH concern we wouldn't have had prior to the MCR. Oh well, I digress.

We could talk for days about the pros and cons of 'accountants' in the planning process......but that would bore most people here. I do agree that the finance activity is important in getting a vehicle to actually launch.......helps keep the program grounded in reality. I just think that sometimes it's given too much control based on easily quantifiable data, money. Customer satisfaction has never been easily quantifiable and thus takes a back seat.

 

Man if Ford would mass produce a line of purely electric cars then they'd be in business like no other.

I'm sure a car similar to the Tesla Motors car, if mass produced, could be sold at extremely competitive price. The market right now is ripe for these kinds of cars.

Imagine ford producing a electric 4-door sedan that has a 200-250 mile range and costs around 25-30k. They could also produce a 2-door ultra-light sports coupe, a small-suv, a hatch, etc.

 

One last comment and I am done about the nitty gritty MCR's (Material Cost Reductions for those not in the know) are not driven by program finance, rather (like you state) are targets set by management to achieve arbitrary cost levels (read: tasks).

On the electric car point.. The problem is there are very few companies that have the capability to produce a purely electric powertrain, the ones that exist do not have any type of capacity for a vehicle line (for example the Hybrid Escape is production limited by suppliers who simply cannot produce more without billions of dollars of funding to expand thier production capabilites as well as the Tier II and Tier III suppliers).

This technology also comes at a steep price. If any car company would produce a fully electric car, they would do so at a HUGE loss per vehicle (even at 25-30k per vehicle), only partially made up by the gain they would get in CAFE.

 

Thanks for that info.

So do you think Tesla Motors is set to lose money for every car they sell? Their car is priced at around $100k. I highly doubt that as they are a very small company.

Don't you think that if Ford was able to divert alot of its resources to mass produce that car they could bring the price of it down significantly?

 

Well, I will be honest that I do not know much about the Tesla Motor pure electric vehicle. At that price, I would assume they would be making a profit or they wouldnt sell it (I hope at least!).

If all auto manufacturers could decide on a common powertrain the costs would definately come down over time but the start up costs would be tremendous. It would take a joint effort from the large auto manufacturers to get this technology "affordable" and proven. Unfortunately by doing something jointly the only distinguishing characteristic would be design as they would all have to work from the same powertrain setup.

This is part of the reason this won't happen in the near future. The domestics are spending money to get new design vehicles in the market with some new technology but nothing too new where there would be a ton of R&D that would need to take place as it would lengthen the time to market. At the same time, the foreign competition is slowly working on thier R&D but they also have to keep thier products fresh or they will lose marketshare back to the domestics new products. At this point in time, consumers are not demanding a product like a fully electric car in the numbers it would take for the auto manufacturers to take notice.

 

I personally think that if one of the major automakers was able to produce a electric vehicle with a 250+ mile range, comparable power with its gas counterpart, and a price around $25-30k it would sell like hotcakes. The Tesla Motors car, if priced around a Corvette would sell amazingly well I think.

 

Agreed.. however as it stands right now, a transmission that would work with a electric engine runs more than double the cost of a conventional engine/trans not to mention the cost of engine, batts, and regenerative braking.

Back on topic, I was surprised to see the bold moves commercial that shows the "family" vacationing and at the very end, the dad is dropped off, thanks mom for bringing him along for the weekend and tells the kids he will see them next weekend. Definately bold on Ford's part to bring up the divorced family w/kids IMO and how many people that represents in today's society.

 

Whoa...what episode was that?

 

Who in their right mind would buy an electric car for 100k!? Same people that would buy a Volkswagon for 85k.

News flash!! "Ford misses the boat!" FMC fails to anticipate the demand for SUV and trucks would drop and misses the crossover SUV boom". FMC is scrambling to catch up.

Read that in the buisness section today. Hard to believe...

 

Well, otherside, why not go take a look at the car at least. www.teslamotors.com

0-60 in 4 seconds. Great looks. Instant torque. Exclusivity. These are all attributes that people would pay a good deal of money for.

 

umm.. can you limk the article otherside? Last i checked the freestyle was one of the first to the market followed by the CX7 and the Edge this year..

 

Sorry.. it wasn't an episode (dont think, haven't look @ the site).. Saw it on TV the past few nights.

 

Sorry, late addition to the conversation.

Tesla-
Only the first 100 roadsters will sell for $100K. After that? Who knows. There are plans to make an eclectic sedan for MUCH less in about three years. The roadster is an obviously vehicle to get more corporate or investor buy-in to producer larger more massed produced cars like a sedan, hatch, cross over and more.

Electric engines-
Might be more expensive, but could also be cheaper. I remember reading on the website that certain elements of a piston car are not needed for an electric car. Like no alternators (obviously), no oil since there's no pistons or engine friction of any kind. I may be mistaken, but the internals are different- but it doesn't necessarily mean more expensive. The transmission on the Tesla only has two forward gears (up to 13k RPMs), and one reverse; does that mean the transmission is cheaper? Who knows. All the stuff is on the website, it's a pretty good read.

<edit>
Here's the website
http://www.teslamotors.com/engineering/how_it_works.php
Also, I want to rethink my above statement. For now, the building /parts of the car is obviously more expensive, since it's the first of it's kind. Like the saying goes for the pharmacetical industry, the first pill costs billions to make, every pill after that is affordable. Can these parts and assembly be cheaper to make in mass?
</edit>

Fold Bold Moves-
I've been watching the episodes on the website. The first two episodes were good, but then after that it just starts to show the seems of a clever marketing idea. There was a big three part series on the Shelby Mustang... so what? They talked a little about Hybrid and Flex fuel cars, but nothing that says "we’re re-positioning the company with the following vehicles in mind and with these promises."

They're right though, I like cheering for an underdog and Ford is it right now. The website is a good idea, I just feel like they're off to slow start or a misstep.

All of the contributors for this thread have pointed out good things, many of which I learned from (which is always good). While I'm not in the car industry, I do know that results move slowly. A car's life span from sketch to end of model may be around 8-10 years. The first half of the life of the car the consumers don't see or hear much of, and already there's a lot of money put into it.

I feel Ford Bold moves is the same thing. If they just now started to change their paradigm, then we won't see results of it until a few more years down the road. 2008 at the earliest.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself. This is my problem with accountants and other financial types. You wouldn't believe the stupidly they cause in banking. Cut a corner now to save a couple dollars on "cost centers", but end up spending 2-3x more later doing what they should have in the beginning.

There's a fine line between being grounded in reality and meaningless penny pinching. Too bad the idiots in charge always seem to fall in the second category.

 

The problem isn't with the majority of the finance community, we are not the ones making decisions to cut this or that or make this component cheaper or to take out content. Those decisions are made by senior management as part of thier "strategy".

Keep in mind, engineers get credit for making a part cheaper, not finance, this leads back into the cultural thing mentioned earlier. If you are an engineer and you have to make your parts cheaper because of senior management direction every year, how do you think that part will be designed for the first year? Over engineer the crap out of it so you can simplify it later down the road.

I don't know what industry you are in, and your statement may be 100% true for your company, but I can tell you it is not the case where I work.

Wanted to also mention one thing.. a $0.10 save on a part may not seem like a lot a may classify as penny pinching, but think of it this way - if the vehicle sells say 500,000 units a year, that action (assuming it is a prudent action the customer will never know about and does not generate any quality/durability issues) that action added $50k to the bottom line.

 

Also this is the commercial I referenced earlier about the divorced family:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLVa3cZyGIo

 

weird i forgot about this- apparently i heard about the b segment before

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...hlight=segment

 

Bolder moves come out of my ***...

 

Ford Owns a controlling interest in Mazda. Technically, if you own an RX-8 you own a Ford.

 

Ford makes/made purely electric cars, mostly city use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_TH!NK

They are also big on hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen ICEs with fleet vehicles already running on it, and a partnership with Stuart Energy and Ballard Systems for local small scale hydrogen production from portable solar/wind generation stations.

http://www.21stcentury.co.uk/cars/ford_th!nk_fc5.asp

 

I had no idea...