Ford confirmed the assembly locale of its F-150 Hybrid this week, saying the electrified pickup would not stray from its aluminum-bodied brethren. The hybridized F-Series will, unsurprisingly, go into production at the Rouge’s Dearborn Truck Plant in 2020, with additional (non-hybrid) production handled by Ford’s Kansas City Assembly.

The automaker made the announcement as part of its 100th anniversary celebration of the River Rouge Complex. While that left the F-150 proclamation a little light on details, Ford previously said the model would probably not be a plug-in hybrid, but would boast outlets for electrically powered tools/devices — functioning as a mobile generator. However, the announcement itself focused primarily on celebrating the Rouge’s centennial.  (Read More…)

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NATCO) has joined Ford, Uber and Lyft to work with the data platform SharedStreets to glean a better understanding of America’s infrastructure. Their collective goal is to “make it easier for the private sector to work with cities around the world and leverage data to improve urban mobility.”

That means different things to different companies. For Uber and Lyft, aggregate data on passenger pickups and drop-offs could be useful in deciding where to deploy their vehicles. The information could also prove helpful in telling city planners how to best manage traffic patterns. Uber also said it would track speeders and what on types of roads people are more apt to drive dangerously.  (Read More…)

Ford’s decision to construct the current-generation F-150’s body purely of aluminum paid off in terms of lightweighting, fuel economy, and sales, but rising commodity costs over the past couple of years eroded some of the financial benefit. There’s far greater headaches facing Ford these days, as the industry grapples with tariffs on not just imported aluminum and steel, but vehicles as well.

A second income-sucking tariff hit in July, when the U.S. applied an import duty of 25 percent on a slew of Chinese goods, prompting China to up its own tariffs on American goods, including automobiles. Ford isn’t having it. Having already lost $1 billion in profit, CEO Jim Hackett has a message for President Trump. (Read More…)

Ford Motor Company is currently on track to sell 939,809 F-Series pickup truck sales in the United States in calendar year 2018.

That number is hugely significant. Not only does it represent far greater volume than any other vehicle line can manage (the F-Series was outselling the combined efforts of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra by 15 percent at the halfway mark), it would also mark the first occasion since 2005 in which any vehicle line topped the 900K mark.

The F-Series accounts for 36 percent of U.S. Ford Motor Company sales, outsells Ford/Lincoln cars by nearly two to one, and outsells all Ford/Lincoln SUVs/crossovers by roughly 2,000 units per month. Use Volkswagen, a global powerhouse, for further comparison: the German brand isn’t likely to sell 400,000 vehicles in America this year. With one-third of the year remaining, Ford has already sold 603,926 F-Series trucks.

But the track towards 939,809 is important for another reason. It’s also 298 sales greater than Ford’s all-time best number. What does Ford need to do during the final four months of the year to break its record? (Read More…)

Well, it’s not ending up on a sedan, that’s for sure. A Canadian trademark filing shows Ford Motor Company wants to emblazon the word Adrenaline on an upcoming model, and the automaker’s insistence that traditional passenger cars aren’t worth bothering with points to a future use on something rugged in nature.

Either the name’s bound for the rear liftgate of the so-called Baby Bronco, or Ford caved to the wishes of hard-core purists who don’t want the Mach 1 name anywhere near an electric crossover. (Read More…)

As former treasurer of Ford Motor Company, Schloss probably doesn’t look at that dark period a decade ago with much fondness. It was a rough time, as he, Chief Financial Officer Lewis Booth, and CEO Alan Mulally (among others) attempted to guide their ship through a swirling financial storm.

It’s far calmer waters now, and the 36-year Ford veteran now finds himself serving as CFO of the automaker’s mobility arm. And it will stay that way until the end of December, at which point the 59-year-old Schloss hands over his hat and starts the cushy life of a retired executive. (Read More…)

You might as well call this post “QOTD: Devil’s Advocate Edition.” I was prepared to feel furious by the time Ford CEO Jim Hackett’s Thursday appearance at the Midwestern Governors Conference wrapped up, and there was good reason why. The subject of the conference involved that dreaded word: mobility.

How will automated technologies change the way we live? That’s what participants wanted to talk about, and you can bet that Hackett was front and center, gabbing about his favorite topic. How will technology alter the way we travel, the way we drive? The hashtag #MGASmartland filtered through my Twitter feed. Certainly, the talk had all the makings of something I’d find depressing. Time to find that red Barchetta and a barn to hide it in.

It didn’t help that the first Hackett quote I saw emerge from the conference was a tired trope urbanists (read: car haters) trot out on a regular basis. (Read More…)

Once upon a time, a kid who’d been handed the keys to the family car only stopped accelerating when a stop sign or red light approached, the vehicle ran out of gas, a speed trap appeared in the distance, or they hit the governor.

Today, technology allows parents to pry into their kids’ lives like never before. Moms and dads can harass their offspring remotely with phone calls and text messages, keep tabs on their behavior via social media posts, and even follow their minute-by-minute travels via phone tracker apps. Childhood is dead and parents are the new KGB. With its MyKey system, Ford seized on the modern parent’s growing paranoia and offered these human helicopters the opportunity to lock their crossover into “sedate” mode before tossing junior the keys. Well, fob.

But how many people actually use the feature? As it turns out, plenty. But to use it, they first need to know it exists. (Read More…)

For Ford, returning to the city of Detroit means first checking off a long list of tax abatements — breaks it says it needs in order to pull off its planned Corktown campus. That would mean $103 million in lost future tax revenue for the city itself, though total incentive package Ford wants amounts to $238.6 million.

Depending on which direction you’re coming from, it’s either agregious or just the cost of doing business. (Read More…)

President Donald Trump jumped on Twitter Sunday morning to rattle off a series of musings I couldn’t have cared less about. However, mixed in with the rest of them, was a reference to last month’s news that Ford abandoned its plans to import the Chinese-built Focus Active into the United States.

“‘Ford has abruptly killed a plan to sell a Chinese-made small vehicle in the U.S. because of the prospect of higher U.S. Tariffs,'” Trump said in reference to a CNBC article from August. “This is just the beginning. This car can now be BUILT IN THE U.S.A. and Ford will pay no tariffs!”

Whether or not you support the president, he has made a genuine effort to convince automakers to do their manufacturing within the United States. However, his comments on the matter make it seem as if he’s a tad confused on how things actually work. Perhaps we can attribute his statement to an unbridled optimism or a tongue-in-cheek jab at Ford. Otherwise, the only explanation is that he doesn’t have the best understanding of what’s happening with the industry — which would be mildly alarming.  (Read More…)

A lengthy Medium post penned by Darren Palmer, director of product development for Ford’s Team Edison, went live yesterday, no doubt at the request of Ford PR types and company brass. (It was shared on Ford’s media page.)

In it, the Ford product veteran goes on about the challenges facing his team of electric vehicle developers, mentioning, “The stakes are high.” Are they ever. With 16 fully electric vehicles on the way by 2022, joined by 24 electrified vehicles, that’s a heavy plate to carry. Despite having nearly 20 years of hybrid vehicle exposure under its belt, large swaths of the buying public remain confused by electrified powertrains (“Will my PHEV leave me stranded with an empty battery?”) and anxious about EV range. It takes time — a lot of time, apparently —  to change hearts and minds. The U.S. EV take rate is less than 1 percent of new vehicle sales.

However, what created a splash on Thursday was not the revelation that building and selling EVs to the American public is hard, but the image accompanying the post. (Read More…)

With Ford Motor Company dropping all but one car from its lineup to focus on utility vehicles and crossovers, there’s little reason to run ad campaigns for both. You don’t see Coca-Cola running spots for both Diet Coke and Coke BlāK, as the latter of the two beverages disappeared from store shelves roughly a decade ago. Companies don’t bother pushing products they don’t have, and pretty soon Ford won’t have cars.

Thus, the automaker has ended all nationwide marketing for the Fiesta, Focus, Taurus, and Fusion. Mark LaNeve, Ford’s vice president of U.S. marketing, sales and service, said the automaker intends to use the freed advertising dollars on the company’s current and forthcoming utility models — setting aside a portion for the Mustang. But the Fusion, which is slated to stick around for another two years, will have to go without. (Read More…)

As far as safety recalls go, this one’s pretty sizeable, and it impacts a company that’s seen a lot of money lost on safety recalls in recent years. Ford Motor Company has announced the recall of nearly two million examples of the world’s best-selling vehicle to prevent the seemingly unlikely occurrence of seatbelt-related blazes.

The recall, affecting 1,995,776 trucks in North America — 1,619,112 of them in the United States, is the result of 17 documented fires or reports of smoke in 2015-2018 model year F-150 regular cabs or SuperCrew models sold stateside. Another six incidents took place in Canada.

The fires originated inside the vehicles’ B-pillar, with the seatbelt pretensioner as the source of the issue. While the life-saving device works properly to restrain the front-seat driver and passenger in the event of a crash, it’s what occurs after the device’s deployment that has Ford worried. (Read More…)

This topic keeps worming its way into your author’s brain, and it remains a regular point of discussion in the TTAC Slack chat room. How could it not? Ford announced the demise of its non-Mustang passenger car lineup earlier this year while simultaneously declaring that no customer would be left behind.

No one’s being cut loose from the Ford family, CEO Jim Hackett remarked. Ford’s just reinventing the car. Okay…

Now that Dearborn’s plan to import the lightly crossoverized Focus Active from China has bit the dust, entry-level customers (meaning those without much dough, or those in the mood for downsizing and good fuel economy) can choose from the base, front-drive, three-cylinder EcoSport and not much else. What a choice. Maybe a low-end Escape, if those exist? We’re already well into the $20k range now, before tax, admin, and freight. (Read More…)

Long before the Wrangler and Cherokee became Jeep’s household names, and even before the Jeep brand existed as we know it today, the company known as Kaiser Jeep produced the Jeepster Commando. And for a few special examples, Hurst made some of its own modifications.

Let’s have a look at a special proto-Cherokee:

(Read More…)