ford has a new plan

TDC said:

First Ford is my current GT350. May be my last Ford if they don't make specialty models.

The Explorer is nice but the Pilot owns that segment due to Honda quality, resale and value for the dollar.

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Ahhhh....no, they do not. Less than 1/2 the number of Explorers.

It would be very foolish for Ford to get rid of Ford Performance when other automakers are strengthening their performance brand lineups.

I think consolidation of the Ford lineup in terms of models offered and more standard equipment leveraging economies of scale would be a wise move. We'll see how all this pans out soon enough!

If I was Ford here would be my Ford Performance lineup with the Fiesta not offered in US:

Fiesta ST
Focus ST and eventual RS
Fusion ST
Shelby GT350 NA Road Course Car
Shelby GT500 FI Street, Strip, Track
Escape ST
Ranger Raptor
Bronco Raptor (name subject to change)
F150 Raptor
Ford GT

sher-bant said:

How about those Cubs!??

Now they just need to win the next three!

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I would settle for a consistent strike zone by the umps. Astros bats need to come alive and the crappy strike calls for the Yankees are killing the Astros. I think MLB wants a East Coast West Coast World Series.

Speaking of large metropolitan areas, all 4 teams remaining in the NLDS and ALDS come from the 4 largest cities in the US.

A second back on topic. Ford please continue to make vehicles utilizing Ford Performance.

TRS7139 said:

Ahhhh....no, they do not. Less than 1/2 the number of Explorers.

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Noted and thanks for the correction.

I started thread but will jump in as a Chicago boy who got into farming
1. There more Chevy and ford in country because they have more dealerships there
2 founding fathers really smart group that compromised on everything
3less populated states get electoral votes so they would not get ignored same for 2 senators
4 republican and democrats laugh at us share expensive dinners and love lobbyists
I am a card carrying libertarian think Ran Paul you guys this spring bring your cars I will cook supply refreshments and we can talk cars and figure out how we might change the world

Soooo what happens to all these dilapidated dump trucks i hafta dodge on the daily? Electric dump trucks?? These drivers don’t have all their teeth most times! Do they go out of business?

jvandy50 said:

Soooo what happens to all these dilapidated dump trucks i hafta dodge on the daily? Electric dump trucks?? These drivers don’t have all their teeth most times! Do they go out of business?

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I have family in the trucking business...hard to say if they will allow these vehicles to be driverless but times do change. Where do you buy your music CDs these days? You don't - you buy a single song at a time or a subscription.

Planes have been able to fly themselves for a while now - but we still require pilots. Maybe [MENTION=21800]Tomster[/MENTION] can chime in on that.

Self driving is not ready for prime time. I have a friend in the SF bay area who is in the industry and needless to say, it is an evolving technology. If I was the CEO of Ford, I would not be hanging it out there stating that electric self driving vehicles are in the near future. It aint happening. In the 5-10 year time frame, sure, anything is possible.

Now, about the issue that dragged me into this.... The reason that there are two pilots in an airliner is redundancy. If one guy has an issue, the other guy can fly and land. Automation does not necessarily mean the airplane can and will fly itself (we control automation). Furthermore, I don't think the flying public would stand by and allow a pilotless aircraft fly them from point A to point B. Of course that will probably be dependent upon how this whole self driving car thing goes........

Commercial aviation is very safe. As a matter of fact, it doesn't get much safer. Even though planes can fly themselves (and we use autopilot all the time), Pilots are trained for one particular aircraft and they are the essential "resident experts" on the scene and responsible for each phase of flight from point A to point B.

Any new technology has its risks. The perceived "self driving" almost suggests a lack of responsibility for the operation and responsibility of a particular vehicle. I suggest that the people in the legislative branches of our government look hard at the laws and responsibilities of operating one of these self driving vehicles and the potential impact on the public at large.

As it was mentioned, the technology to fly airplanes without pilots has existed for quite some time. The reason that airplanes don't fly themselves is because it is not safe to do so. An isolated self driving car accident is not quite the same as an isolated self driving aviation accident.

Tom, you're right. However, if the automotive transport industry worked like the aviation industry does, we'd all be in the back seats of our cars driven by highly trained specialists that make an excellent living driving us around. Accident rates would be a fraction of what we see today.

But that's not the real world.

Driving is going to bypass the phase of highly trained experts and move from adequately trained occupants to machines. Accident rates will plummet when humans are gone from the equation entirely; computers just won't run into other computers.

JAJ said:

Tom, you're right. However, if the automotive transport industry worked like the aviation industry does, we'd all be in the back seats of our cars driven by highly trained specialists that make an excellent living driving us around. Accident rates would be a fraction of what we see today.

But that's not the real world.

Driving is going to bypass the phase of highly trained experts and move from adequately trained occupants to machines. Accident rates will plummet when humans are gone from the equation entirely; computers just won't run into other computers.

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Yup, at the end of the day, we all have to hop in our cars and drive to work to keep this machine rolling. It all needs to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. That was the reason for my suggestion pertaining to the regulation of this new technology. Machines do break and that is where some degree of responsibility steps in.

Tomster said:

Self driving is not ready for prime time. I have a friend in the SF bay area who is in the industry and needless to say, it is an evolving technology. If I was the CEO of Ford, I would not be hanging it out there stating that electric self driving vehicles are in the near future. It aint happening. In the 5-10 year time frame, sure, anything is possible.

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Emphasis added. In an industry with 2-5 year development cycles and 6-8 year product life cycles, 5-10 years IS the near future by definition. The 2023 models are being designed today.

I have, through my work, done a fair bit of research and some scenario modeling on autonomous car adoption. The value proposition is enormous, and the business models are already changing to accommodate a future where very few people buy and own cars.

First, the value prop:
(1) Vehicle utilization and urban spaces: Imagine Uber or Lyft with autonomous cars. Need a lift from A to B, tap your phone, car comes to you, car takes you to your destination, and whizzes off. Charge or fuel gets low, car takes itself OUTSIDE the city center to a docking station to fuel/charge up. Each car is in use basically 24/7, charge time aside.

Most cars sit around for most of their lives. I live in Chicago and own 6 cars, and I take the El to work. So basically I do no driving M-Th, so really I own 6 cars for 100 days per year. It's really stupid, when you think of it that way. Those 6 cars hold down effectively 1200 sq feet of land in a city where an empty 25'x125' lot sells for $450k. I pay to insure them, title them, register them, etc. to the tune of ~$1200/car/year (it's less because the race car and the vintage car are cheap, but you get the point). Now the major cost of Uber is the driver. Take that out of the equation, and the autonomous car will be cheaper than a train ride in all but the most dense urban settings, much faster than a bus, etc. Think of how quickly cities will ban curbside parking in central districts, freeing up traffic lanes or more green space. Think of how quickly it will become completely cost-ineffective to own cars in an urban setting. But yes, most of the country isn't urban, by area ...

(2) Long-haul labor costs built into everything you buy. Beyond taxi/car-share drivers, there is a huge driver labor cost baked into basically everything you ever buy in the US. Almost all goods get to market by a truck. Autonomous trucks won't fall asleep, won't be hopped up on caffeine, and won't have salaries. They also won't maneuver as well in tight spaces, so I expect we'll see more hub-and-spoke delivery networks where big trucks run on interstates, and transit-style vans will handle the urban/suburban delivery at a much lower per-mile cost. The cost of transport will drop quite a bit.

Due to higher utilization vs. sitting around, vehicle life will be 2-3 years. Fewer cars will be needed at any one time, but each will be used non-stop until used up. So fleet turnover will be much higher. People will still be driving their own cars, if they wish, for I think at least 20-30 more years - but I expect that sometime during my lifetime, human drivers will be banned from the roads in at least some areas (I'm in my mid-30s).

Second, the business models: Besides Ford and GM and everyone else trying to partner with a ride-share partner, and tech companies toying with cars (and health care products, but that's ANOTHER long post), Volvo is already thinking about how to "sell" cars when a fraction of the population wants to own them: http://fortune.com/2017/09/21/volvo-thinks-car-ownership-should-be-like-phone-ownership/

Expect vehicle ownership as a "normal' thing to go away; it will become a hobbyist activity at some point - but not for a while, because as noted early on, change DOES come slowly ... but it comes.

What's this mean for us? Probably nothing in the near term, except be ready for the economic shock of ~2M taxi and car-share drivers and ~4M truck drivers becoming unemployed over the next 15-20 years.

As for the very original post, FP is a drop in the bucket of Ford's cost base. I'm pretty sure it will be protected even if as a marketing and PD expense.


I think that's my third post on this forum. They won't all be so long.

JAJ said:

I thought about this for a long time, and I've concluded that not only will cars change in radical ways, car ownership will also disappear. The value proposition will be this: "why own a car when you can summon a vehicle that you pay for by the mile and that'll take you door to door faster than you could ever drive?"

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This concept will work great in densely populated areas. Not so much in areas where there are 10 people per 100 square miles.

Hack said:

This concept will work great in densely populated areas. Not so much in areas where there are 10 people per 100 square miles.

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Yep, i see home health patients in a rural area and the mustang or Yamaha is not making that trip even if i wanted to. 4WD has been used on many occasions.

Hope some of these things have some ground clearance, AWD, and knobby tires!

That's why this will be a very slow and potentially never-complete conversion. My bet on the order of transition events:

1) Dense urban areas ban self-driven cars in downtown areas to reduce congestion, increase pedestrian safety, and free up a ton of real estate. There will be car parks and autonomous vehicle "stations" on the fringes of these zones, park-n-ride style for people who drive in from outside the urban area

2) Long-haul trucking will get automated, primarily for cost and time efficiency reasons (reducing downtime = better inventory management, fresher produce, lower supply chain costs generally)

These will happen first because there is major money to be made/ saved.

<<< big break in time >>>

3) Main artery highways will close off to self-driven cars

4) Rural roads and low-population areas will never close off, but instead of an interstate on-ramp, there will be other park-n-ride type depots where you leave your personal car and get in a robot car for intercity trips

These will happen long-term and mostly be organic (i.e., generational turnover, far fewer people will want to drive, cost of autopilot cars will come down, etc. Not really any money to be made by forcing people to stop driving, so it won't happen for a long time and it won't be mandated top-down.

oldbmwfan said:

That's why this will be a very slow and potentially never-complete conversion. My bet on the order of transition events:

1) Dense urban areas ban self-driven cars in downtown areas to reduce congestion, increase pedestrian safety, and free up a ton of real estate. There will be car parks and autonomous vehicle "stations" on the fringes of these zones, park-n-ride style for people who drive in from outside the urban area

2) Long-haul trucking will get automated, primarily for cost and time efficiency reasons (reducing downtime = better inventory management, fresher produce, lower supply chain costs generally)

These will happen first because there is major money to be made/ saved.

<<< big break in time >>>

3) Main artery highways will close off to self-driven cars

4) Rural roads and low-population areas will never close off, but instead of an interstate on-ramp, there will be other park-n-ride type depots where you leave your personal car and get in a robot car for intercity trips

These will happen long-term and mostly be organic (i.e., generational turnover, far fewer people will want to drive, cost of autopilot cars will come down, etc. Not really any money to be made by forcing people to stop driving, so it won't happen for a long time and it won't be mandated top-down.

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Interesting comments and appreciate your thoughts and forward thinking.

I don't disagree with any of your comments other than point #2 whereby long haul trucking will be automated.

Having been in the trucking industry for ~50 years I certainly see some of the big box carriers heading in that direction but for many of the smaller trucking firms along with all of the open top carriers (flats, steps, RGN's etc.) I do not see that happening for a very long time due to many variables.

Watching all of the various comments on here with respect to the future of performance driving for us enthusiasts I would suggest that one of the benefits of being one of the older members I will not have to experience the major impact of electrified vehicles in the years to come.

:cheers: