Ford lost $5 billion on its EV business in 2024—and things could get worse this year | Fast Company

February 6, 2025 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Ford Motor on Wednesday projected up to $5.5 billion in losses on its electric vehicle and software operations this year, a loss similar to last year and a sign of the severe difficulties in cutting costs on battery-powered models.

The automaker forecast overall profitability for 2025, but even that was lower than in 2024. For the fourth quarter, it reported a net profit of $1.8 billion, up from a loss of $500 million in the year-ago quarter as pension-related costs weighed on results.

The company’s shares were down nearly 5% in after-hours trading

Ford keeps having to repair customers’ new cars and trucks. Its profit is plunging and its stock tumbled | CNN Business

July 25, 2024July 24, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Shares of Ford fell more than 11% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the automaker reported much weaker than expected earnings. The company said it was compelled to set aside more money to cover the cost of repairing customers’ vehicles.

The company (F) did not break out how much extra money it set aside to cover warranty expenses, but said “most” of the $1.2 billion drop in operating income in the quarter came from that increased expense. Still, Ford said it is making gains in product quality, despite the increased costs.

“We still have lots of work ahead of us to raise quality and reduce costs and complexity, but the team is committed and we’re heading in the right direction,” said Ford CFO John Lawler in the company’s earnings report.

The company’s adjusted net income fell $1 billion to $1.9 billion, or 47 cents a share. That badly missed analysts’ forecasts of earnings per share of 68 cents a share

Tesla may be floundering—but Ford’s EV sales tell a different story | Fast Company

May 13, 2024May 12, 2024 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Tesla, you may have heard, is going through a rough patch, and the company represents a large enough share of U.S. electric vehicle sales that its problems could lead to a down year for the entire market.

But that hasn’t happened—at least not yet—partly because several other brands’ EV sales have risen to take the sting out of Tesla’s decline.

Ford is looking especially good, with year-to-date sales through April of 28,252 EVs, an increase of 97% from the same period last year. That makes Ford the country’s second-leading EV brand, although Tesla still outsells Ford’s EVs at a rate of about seven to one.

Ford hit with $1.7 billion verdict for F-series pickup roof collapse that killed couple | CNN

August 23, 2022August 22, 2022 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The family of an elderly couple killed when the roof of their F-250 pickup collapsed during a rollover accident in 2014 has been awarded a massive $1.7 billion in punitive damages from Ford.

The jury appeared to endorse the plaintiff’s arguments that Ford knew of the problem years before the fatal crash, acted slowly to correct it and that other deaths have resulted from the same design flaw.

Ford says its Autonomous Cars will Last Just Four Years | TechCrunch

August 30, 2019August 26, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The automotive industry has been promoting self-driving cars as a kind of panacea that will solve numerous problems that modern society is grappling with right now, from congestion to safety to productivity (you can work while riding!).

Unfortunately, a very big question that has been almost entirely overlooked is: how long will these cars last?

The answer might surprise you. In an interview with The Telegraph in London, John Rich, who is the operations chief of Ford Autonomous Vehicles, reveals that the “thing that worries me least in this world is decreasing demand for cars,” because “we will exhaust and crush a car every four years in this business.”

Ford skips over semi-autonomous cars for fully autonomous ones | Mashable

February 23, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Will self-driving cars have steering wheels? Maybe not, if engineers keep falling asleep.

Ford’s self-driving cars will skip over Level 3 — where cars are automated, but human drivers are still expected to take over if need be — to Level 4, where cars are basically fully autonomous except for extreme conditions. (Self-driving cars that would meet the requirements for Level 5 are still theoretical at this point.) The levels are defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers, or SAE.

Automotive News reported that Ford came to that decision after its engineers fell asleep, lulled into a false sense of security with nothing much to do while driving Level 3 cars.

“These are trained engineers who are there to observe what’s happening,” Ford Product Development Chief Raj Nair told the publication. “But it’s human nature that you start trusting the vehicle more and more and that you feel you don’t need to be paying attention.”

Ford Cancels Plans for New $1.6 Billion Mexico Plant | Bloomberg

January 3, 2017January 3, 2017 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Ford Motor Co. will scrap plans to build a $1.6 billion plant in Mexico, after coming under criticism by President-elect Donald Trump for shifting small-car production south of the border.

The next-generation Focus compact car will be built at an existing factory in Hermosillo, Mexico, and Ford will cancel plans to build a plant in San Luis Potosi, Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields said Tuesday. The second-largest U.S. automaker will build two products at a factory in Wayne, Michigan, where it assembles the Focus now, protecting about 3,500 jobs.

6 million borrowers are 90 days late on their car loans | Money Cnn

December 2, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Roughly six million auto borrowers with shoddy credit scores are at least 90 days late on making their loan payments, according to new figures released by the New York Federal Reserve. The percentage of delinquent subprime auto loans has raced to the highest level since 2010.

Since the end of the Great Recession, there’s been an explosion of auto loans, growing to more than $1.1 trillion. That, along with a far stronger economy, has helped fuel a boom in U.S. auto sales.

While Detroit’s sales slowed down earlier this year due to rising prices, General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) on Thursday said sales accelerated in November. The industry is now back on track for record sales in 2016. It could be the eighth-straight year of increases.

But part of those sales may have been fueled by easy availability of credit for borrowers with poor credit, who are evidently now struggling to pay off those loans.

Ford shifts truck production from Mexico to Ohio | Money CNN

August 13, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Ford’s heavy duty pickup trucks which used to be built in Mexico started rolling off an assembly line in Ohio this week.

That’s good news for the 1,000 Ford workers in Ohio, who might have otherwise been out of work.

It’s also good publicity for Ford (F), which has been under fire for investing so much in Mexico. In April, the automaker said it would invest $2.5 billion in transmission plants in the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Guanajuato, creating about 3,800 jobs there.

Ford’s south-of-the-border strategy has drawn heavy criticism from groups such as the United Auto Workers union and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The Avon Lake, Ohio, plant produced its first batch of Ford’s full-size F-650 and F-750 pick up trucks on Wednesday.