I am starting to think RLXXI is either rperez over at Blueovalforums, or rperez's twin lost at birth.

 

That’s extremely common.

The folks at AWS are propping up Amazon’s hardware and services businesses. Employees at Google’s core search business are paying for their AI experiments. Apple iPhone engineers are paying the bills for just about everything else the company does. For years, GM’s balance sheet looked like a bank that also makes cars on the side.

How do you build production scale without losing money in a given year? Do you think these plants build themselves for free?

 

Sure, let's use Iphone as an example since you mentioned it.

The first iPhone retailed for 500 dollars in 2007 and only was available on one network and subject to wait lists. Today a standard size iphone 14 starts at 829 dollars without carrier attachment., features and capabilities have grown exponentially since then. You can walk into an apple store and walk out with a base model today. No surcharges, no dealer markups, no surprise fees. That's a 38% increase in price over 16 years with improved availability.

In 2007 an F150 started at 18.2k, not sure what the destination was then, call it 800, so 19k. And base fleet spec trucks were widely available with discounts everywhere. Today an F150 starts at 35,590 including destination. You cannot find a based model on dealer lots and ordering one exposes you to dealer markups, delays, etc. So that's an 87%+loss of factory and dealer incentives increase with dramatically worse availability.

I think the comparison speaks for itself.

 

I was talking about one division in the company paying for actions in another.

I’m not defending Ford’s pricing. I’ve said repeatedly in this thread that they lost me with their Lightning price moves. As long as they are selling, they can justify the increases because of supply and demand. At the moment, Ford is the price maker. Once demand catches up to supply, they will be price takers and have to discount and/or reduce to keep moving the metal. Tesla was the first to run up against this principle a few months ago. But none of that has anything to do with intra-company rivalries.

 

If one division paying for another while it itself is having trouble running its own core functions and maintain supplying the market with quality products, it’s the biggest sign that the arrangement of the old division subsidizing the new and up comer is being managed poorly.

if ford cannot even maintain a steady supply of stripped down gas f150s, it’s time to get themselves in order before chasing after Tesla.

 

This is the dealer I bought my ‘15 F150 from. They seem to be doing just fine around here.

 

Is your dealer a huge mega dealer that moves thousands of vehicles a year? My local dealers have trucks but definitely not 77, maybe a dozen per dealer. In fact, my local dealers don't really seem to have recovered all that well considering the inventories they both carried prior to this mess. But, that plays into Ford's hands anyway, reduce inventory to increase the sales transaction.

In contrast, the local Chevy dealers are stacked and they keep getting new inventory which tells me that they are moving vehicles.

 

The cheapest one i see there is 41k after discounts, and two door. If 41k is the new “stripped down” then it is no wonder why they have so many units not moving.

 

This same dealer had 95 in-stock the day I bought my 2015, and I've seen even more in recent months. I think Ford has recovered to the point where they want to be, but competitive pressure to move numbers may cause inventories to inflate and prices to come down. One can hope, at any rate.

GM recently cut production to avoid oversupplying dealers. Right now, the best deal around is on a Ram.

 

Yup. Ford definitely needs a bailout.

Ford's first-quarter sales increase 10.1% on improved F-Series truck production

 

Probably all those trucks setting at the Kentucky race track for months waiting on parts finally hit dealer lots.

Let's don't schedule the parade just yet.

 

I got curious so I looked it up. Turns out what the press release won't say is that 10% improvement is when compared to 22Q1, which, along with 21Q3 were the worst sales quarters for Ford since the 09-10 crash, by a large margin too. The only quarters in the last 20 years they sold less than those two quarters were in late 2009 and early 2010.

I'm sure that's why they want to go upmarket to get more margins per unit. Well, I hope the consumers like 144 month loans on their 60k Explorers and 100k F150s. Maybe if enough people took out 20 year car loans there will be pressure for a car loan forgiveness.

 

The thread’s title is “Ford’s Future? Bailout?”

They’ve done nothing but turn profits for the last two years, and the first quarter was a meaningful improvement over 12 months ago. I disagree with lots of what they’re doing, and I’ve vented some of that here. But the idea of a profitable company that’s improving operations going bankrupt is just silly.

I think the bigger long-term concern is how far they can control costs in the EV market. We disagree on the merits of those investments, but they are betting their future on their ability to sell tons of EVs at high volume. Their competitors are racing to the bottom with EV pricing, and Ford needs to be able to compete. I think that’s likely with the economies of scale they’re building, but their current pricing doesn’t reflect that.

 

The problem with a discussion of this nature is that anyone can find a reference for their point of view, even if they are contradictory to each other.

 

To be specific, their ICE division did nothing but turn profits for the last two years, yet that came with the CEO disparaging that division, neglect in quality, ordering process, dealer markups, shady dealer actions, and production problems that have left a sour taste in many long timer Ford buyers' mouths.

Their most exciting offering in years, the Bronco, is so poorly run, the roofs are cracking, the engines got a bad rep for the valves, and now they can't even product manual models or base models.

The SDs, well we all know about the SDs.

With F150 sitting on lots at a time when they should be flying off the shelf after two years of supply constraint, the tea leaves are not telling good omens.