| From: Savant | 1/17/2023 10:28:31 AM | | | | | | **Dealers having 'electrical resistance' lol
Cars
Over 40% Of Lincoln Dealers Say No To Ford’s EV Plans
More than a full third of Ford’s Lincoln dealers have opted out of the electric future.
By
Jo Borrás
Published 10 seconds ago
5 Comments
It looks like Ford’s grand plan to electrify its North American franchise dealers by 2030 hit a roadblock, kids — and it’s one that, frankly, Ford should have seen coming. As it turns out, more than 40% of Ford’s Lincoln brand dealers have decided they don’t want to spend nearly a cool million dollars to install EV chargers at their stores.
That million-dollars isn’t a made-up number, either. A number of experts have estimated that about $900,000 will be necessary to install the two Level 3 DC fast chargers and seven Level 2 chargers that Ford is asking for in the brand’s top 130 vehicle markets. Dealers in smaller markets, meanwhile, are still facing down a $500,000 cost to add “just one” DC fast charger and four Level 2s — and the dealers in smaller markets are pushing back at a higher rate than the top 130.
For Ford, it seems like the dream of an all-electric luxury dealer experience to take the fight to a more-affordable Tesla and an ambitious, reborn Cadillac brand might be further off than they thought!
Is Model E Certification a Big Ask?
Lincoln Corsair; courtesy Ford.
It might seem like a big ask for Lincoln dealers — which, despite the brand’s national ad campaigns and high-profile concept cars, don’t actually have any electric vehicles to sell at the moment — to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade relatively dealerships that parent company, Ford, already made them spend millions of dollars to upgrade over the course of the last decade. Still, it pays to be prepared.
Chris Poulos, chairman of the Lincoln National Dealer Council, seem to think so, anyway, and says that the timing of Ford’s requirements make sense. “If you start the process too late, and then there’s delays, you’re stuck and in a bad place,” said Poulos, who is also the General Manager of West Point Lincoln in Houston, TX. “I do think there’s some thoughtfulness that’s gone into the timing. It does seem like it’s early, but I also can understand what the pitfalls would be if they (Ford) don’t start early.”
Ford, for its part, is quick to put a positive spin on things. As such, they’ve said that the 59% of Lincoln stores that have enrolled in the program (356 dealerships) represent some 88% of the brand’s US sales volume — which, if I’m reading that correctly, means that 41% of the brand’s stores that said “no” represent just 12% of its sales.
Seems like Ford’s trimming the fat and taking out all the problem dealers in one fell swoop to me. What do you guys think? Scroll on down to the bottom of the page and let us know your take on Ford’s Lincoln requirements, in the comments.
cleantechnica.com |
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| From: Savant | 1/25/2023 3:38:40 PM | | | | | | Ford Firing Thousands Of Employees (msn.com)
Following the news, Germany's IG Metall union vowed to disrupt Ford operations across the continent if the job cuts go ahead. A spokesperson at the automaker’s Michigan headquarters said discussions with the German works councils were ongoing. He told Reuters the company needs to be more competitive as it transitions to electric vehicles.
He did not elaborate on specific job plans. In a statement via Automotive News Europe, IG Metall said if negotiations between the works council and management in the coming weeks do not ensure the future of workers, they will join the process. "We will not hold back from measures that could seriously impact the company not just in Germany but Europe-wide," the union warned. |
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 2/3/2023 9:28:38 AM | | | | | | Ford CEO Jim Farley’s frustration builds as he vows to transform the automaker
PUBLISHED FRI, FEB 3 20236:00 AM EST
UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
Phil LeBeau @LEBEAUCARNEWS
CNBC.com
KEY POINTS
-- CEO Jim Farley wants Ford to become a far more efficient company, and he needs it to happen quickly.
-- “We have to change our cost profile,” Farley told CNBC. “We know what we have to go after.”
-- The Detroit automaker missed analyst expectations by a wide margin due to another quarter in which costs and supply chain issues hurt the bottom line.
Ford CEO Jim Farley is frustrated.
The company’s fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday missed analyst expectations by a wide margin, as costs and supply chain issues again hurt Ford’s bottom line, Farley knows his company needs to change.
“We have to change our cost profile,” Farley told CNBC after a call with analysts to discuss the quarter’s results. “We know what we have to go after. I’d love to give you all the metrics and all the specific gaps we see. But you know, whether it’s absenteeism, the number of sequencing centers, the number of wiring harnesses we have, we know what it is.”
In short, Farley wants Ford to become a far more efficient company, and he needs it to happen quickly.
The push to transform Ford is taking on greater urgency after the automaker reported 2022 adjusted earnings of $10.4 billion, just three months after the company told analysts it expected to make $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion in that year.
How did Ford fall more than a billion dollars shy of hitting a profit target it gave Wall Street at the end of October?
Blame it on poor execution and higher-than-expected costs. Last quarter, Ford said, overcoming supply chain challenges, including a shortage of semiconductor chips, increased costs by $1 billion more than planned. Ford production was 100,000 vehicles shy of what the automaker expected to build.
Supply chain and cost issues hurt Ford over the last two years. Last September, Ford warned third-quarter costs would be $1 billion greater than expected. For the last two years, high warranty costs — from recalls and troubled launches of new vehicles — were a problem that Farley and his team have been unable to fix.
Farley said Ford’s complexity is part of the problem.
“We have a lot of complexity relative to the customer and also inside our company. And we can cut the customer-facing complexity like we have, but it takes time to work that down to parts on the line, to the manufacturing line,” he said. “It just takes time to work through that and that’s what we’ll do.”
While discussing the fourth-quarter results with Wall Street analysts, Ford’s leadership declined to detail the specific steps it will take to cut costs and make the automaker more efficient and profitable.
Farley said the answer is not simply cutting jobs, which has historically been the way automakers have cut costs. “There are things we could do in the short term, but I don’t want to just make the output the cuts without redesigning the work. This has to be sustainable and that’s how we’re thinking about it nowadays,” he said.
Will this new push to cut costs hurt Ford’s growth in production and sales of electric vehicles? Farley said no.
In fact, he said he believes separating the EV and internal combustion engine vehicle operations into two distinct divisions will actually accelerate efforts to drive greater efficiency. To prove his point, Farley says Ford’s second generation of EVs will be radically simplified, which should eventually lead to fewer problems and higher margins.
“I can’t wait to show you and the whole world this next cycle of products,” he said. “Many of our competitors are just coming out with their first cycle and we can see their batteries are too big. Their distribution costs are too expensive. They’re spending too much money on advertising. You know, we can’t do that. We don’t plan on doing that.”
When Farley became CEO of Ford in October 2020, he vowed to quickly drive the automaker into a new leg of growth led by electric models like the Mustang Mach-E, the E-Transit commercial van and the F-150 Lightning.
And in many ways, he has succeeded. Ford is No. 2 in EV sales in the United States, with just under 8% market share.
While it’s not close to catching up with Tesla, which sells two out of every three EVs in the U.S., Ford’s EV production is increasing rapidly. At the end of last year, Ford was building 12,000 EVs a month. By the end of 2023, Ford expects EV production will reach 50,000 a month.
Still, for all of its accomplishments transitioning to EVs, Ford continues to face issues with internal combustion engine vehicles, which are responsible for almost all of Ford’s profits.
Farley knows investors are watching and waiting for Ford to finally get its act together.
“Be patient. You know, we got the right team. We got the right plan. We’re growing like heck in our pro and EV business,” Farley said when asked what he would say to Ford shareholders. “This key team is going to deliver for you and you are going to get a great return on your investment.”
— CNBC’s Meghan Reeder contributed to this report.
Ford CEO Jim Farley frustrated after bad earnings (cnbc.com) |
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