Originally Posted by New York Times

What’s your outlook on the U.S. economy?

I think it’s fragile. Inflation is taking its toll. The consumer is still spending, but we’re watching it very carefully. On the other hand, there’s still strong employment, and we are seeing our sales hold up. There are conflicting signals, for sure.

Let’s talk about electric vehicles. About 18 months ago, you launched the F-150 Lightning pickup. It seemed like electric vehicle sales were going to take off. But now Ford is slowing production of that truck. What happened?

E.V. sales are still up 50 percent this year, so sales are growing very fast. But we’ve also seen a politicization of E.V.s. Blue states say E.V.s are great and we need to adopt them as soon as possible for climate reasons. Some of the red states say this is just like the vaccine, and it’s being shoved down our throat by the government, and we don’t want it. I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are.

The other is prices. Electric vehicles are expensive. We know prices will come down, and as that happens, we will have a bigger ramp-up of E.V.s. Keep this in mind: The most valuable company that our industry has ever seen is Tesla, and it’s growing. That’s a very instructive point when people say E.V.s are not desired.

Are you concerned about some of Donald Trump’s comments? He just came into Michigan and said that the transition to electric vehicles is going to result in almost all auto production moving to China.

I don’t want to personalize this, because, frankly, we have to pick a path forward and our lead times are longer than political lead times. So we can’t overreact to one bit of rhetoric or another. We have to deal with the most likely scenario, and how we can create the most value for our company, so we are pushing ahead with E.V.s because we do believe they have great application for a lot of people. And once people drive E.V.s, they will see that it’s a great experience.

Electric vehicles are expensive. Did Tesla’s price cuts have a big effect on your business?

That’s what we have seen with every new technology that has been adapted. You come down the cost curve pretty quickly as batteries get better.

With our first-generation E.V.s, the Lightning and the Mustang Mach-E, they were done with a lot of internal combustion engineering in them. The next generation, which will start coming quite quickly, was developed with a clean sheet of paper. When you do that you can really start taking cost out, and then you can start pricing them accordingly.

Tesla has been leading the price cuts, because they can with their scale. That’s something we are actually counting on in the future. And we will have products that compete and make money in that world.

Originally Posted by '65Ford

Interesting interview except where Ford sidestepped the question on where EV's will be made. Not that EV's production location is critical in the grand scheme. It'd be nice if pharmaceuticals, fabric, and such were made here but oh well.

Originally Posted by FishOnOne

I think Bill Fords responses is a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

Originally Posted by FishOnOne

I think Bill Fords responses is a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

Originally Posted by Tom

I like cars to be made here, but that can be really expensive. The new contract will increase their labor cost by $850-900 per vehicle. A report from a few years ago put U.S. manufacturing as the third most expensive in the world, behind only the UK and Switzerland.

I’d prefer an American-made truck, but we all need trucks that we can afford. My dollar has always chased the best value regardless of where it’s made.

Originally Posted by twobelugas

Ford's full size trucks(1/2 ton at least) is going to have a very hard time competing with GM and Ram which each has 1/2 ton production capacity in Mexico with the margins being critical for the survival of the entire Ford entity.

If Ram retools Saltillo for the DT 1500s then Ford is going to have at least consider shifting some production of F150s over to Mexico for the 15th gen F series(2025?).

Originally Posted by Tom

They seem to have faith they can pull it off, otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to a deal that would put them out of business in the long run.

Originally Posted by Tom

In which way?

I thought his remark about the politicization of their products was on-point. We're the only place in the world where EVs have turned into such a political football, and that makes for a lot of market uncertainty.

Originally Posted by Tom

We're the only place in the world where EVs have turned into such a political football, and that makes for a lot of market uncertainty.

Originally Posted by FishOnOne

The man is looking for excuses. Blame everyone else for their problems.

Originally Posted by tseekins

Has anyone here been to a Ford dealer's lot and actually looked at the window sticker and read the domestic parts content? The F-150 no matter which engine it has is less American made now than it has been in the last 20+ years and yet prices are off the chain. The F-150 right now is about 36% domestically made and to be clear, domestic means the US and Canada. That's pretty dismal from the 81% of my 2011 F-150, a truck that I fully intend to hold onto.

What's really sad is the F-150 is more domestically made than the Ram and the GM twins.

Originally Posted by tseekins

Why don't people care about this anymore?