Yeah, people have a lot of nerve wanting plenty of room for their family and gear and more metal around them for safety. What are they thinking?
1
This tells us much about human nature, and it is very, very ugly.
6
As Forest Gump said: "Dumb is what Dumb does".
Ford and other American car makers focusing all future production on SUV.s is short sighted and dumb. Gas prices will rise (rising right now).
Trump may have helped automakers in short run by voiding requirements for more fuel efficient vehicles, but the planet still needs smaller carbon footprint. Auto companies would be wise to continue spending money to develop more efficient and less polluting vehicles.
5
Cheap gas! My eye!
As of now in the SF Bay Area, regular gas is about $3.60 a gallon, and soon will be $4. Combine that with the monstrosities that "manly Americans" love, and the reduction of fuel efficiency, we will have a disaster. This is insane.
Inevitably, those who need a reliable car with good fuel efficiency will buy Japanese.
2
Why blame Ford? We are the ones purchasing the SUVs.
7
Hence why I recently purchased Toyota stock. There isn't a time I can recall where a competitor up and left an entire market segment. Also recently bought a Camry Hybrid - c'mon higher gas prices, bring it!
4
When gas goes back up, Trump can put tariffs on the "unfair" car makers from overseas. However, they build these vehicles here in the US, but, facts have not gotten in his way up to now, so there is no reason to think they will in the future. By the way, gas is already on its way up. Must have something to do with reducing the corporate tax rate......................
2
I greatly disagree with the move, but it is not about being green. Ford is a public company, they are to make money for their owners, not be a "Green" company except to be a profitable one. And those vehicles will be Green.
3
Once again, the bean counters and the next-quarter-bottom-liners have taken over. One of my European friends recently asked why the American car companies have essentially conceded the world market to their foreign competitors, except in the area of trucks and SUVs. The answer is clear from this column. Ford developed some great, fuel-efficient sedans, but has put zero effort into marketing them. Look at the Super Bowl commercials and all the others like them: endless visions of "Ford tough" trucks going up mountains, pulling trains, or whatever it takes to appeal to to would-be "alpha males." Meanwhile, the water and global temperatures keep going up: it's going to be hard to drive those trucks under water . . .
6
With these plans by US auto companies where they completely ignore the fact that gas prices can quickly skyrocket and remain at punishing levels for long periods of time leading customers to then focus on fuel economy in the name of short term profits, I certainly hope we the people don't bail them out again. We did so in the recent past and they obviously didn't learn their lessons. Why bail them out again when they consciously choose to shoot themselves in the foot?
2
Most of the sedan designs from Ford in the last 10 years were generic. Probably couldn't sell them without mark downs or leasing. The Escape small suv has nice lines as does the Mustang. They just do trucks better. Why not let them. When gas prices rise again it will bring economy like the last time.
Here in NH, a light car like the Prius is horrid in the snow, even with front wheel drive. I don't agree that Ford is influencing the choices - people know what they want. SUV's are very practical to millions of people, and small, fuel efficient ones are the hottest market right now, and electrics are on the way. Tesla already has an electric SUV. Ford is a great American company and I wish them all the luck in the world.
3
WHY YOU ASK Is a GREEN car company pivoting back to SUVs? It's just pursuing another kind of green. DOLLARS!
I agree with Steve's comment about the overblown nature of this opinion piece. As we are currently looking for a family vehicle to replace our Escape, I would love to get a fuel efficient one. But the larger sedans and wagons don't get significantly better mileage than the compact SUVs. Toyota has pulled the Prius V from the U.S. and other fuel efficient alternative are either unappealing (C-max anyone?) or too expensive. Still, Ford's approach does seem extreme.
There is a kind of space war going on on the road. The SUV standard has made it hard for us to see around them in cars. This explains the tiny SUV trend. Even if they don't have much cargo room, at least you can make a safe turn in them.
2
So stupid.
There is no Planet B. We need a serious gas tax, so people will stop being so shortsighted. No progress since the 1990s. Is that how we really want to be, willing to throw away the future for short-term profit?
3
In a word, "shortsighted". Ford has gone from the far-sighted Allen Mullally to a string of leaders without long-term vision or the ability to make their short-term ideas work. So the share price flounders/stagnates and the ideas become progressively more desperate. Not good, and I say that as a shareholder. What Ford needs is excellence of product and balance in the marketplace, just like any other automaker, not a reliance on one sector...even one so profitable as trucks.
3
I don't get it. Why do they have to cede the car market? A large company like Ford should be to compete in both.
Over reliance on the truck market is not a good thing. Next time oil prices spike, Ford could find itself relearning the lessons of 2008...
2
Ford's decision means that another oil shock will send them back into bankruptcy. Or if Americans finally wake up to what is happening to the planet, they'll lose their business in the US.
I doubt there will be another Ford in my future. When the 12 year old Prius wears out, we'll buy something even more efficient, and it clearly won't be a Ford.
4
Why should we care what Ford builds? Its business plan is to make money. If it's not making money, things have to change. We can't expect ethical behavior from a capitalist corporation if that does not fit its business plan. I bought two Ford Taurus' in a row in the '90's. They really weren't that well built. I switched to Prius' and never looked back. Currently drive a small hybrid Lexus. Great car.
3
Gas prices are already on their way up, and will rise farther as the economy tanks under the huge debt burden the current administration and Congress have saddled us under...I will keep my efficient sedan on the road and listen as all the SUV owners wail about the cost of running their "fun, great visibility,room for my gear" SUVs. They may be more efficient than they were but they still guzzle gas. Americans seem to have the memory of a mayfly.
4
Do not assume Ford is ignoring autonomous vehicles and ride sharing- they are working hard in those areas.
1
What the article doesn't address is the greater safety risks to driver, passengers, and pedestrians with increases in the number of pickups, SUV's and 'crossovers' (an SUV by any other name). All have significant increase rollover possibility, with the roof crushing like tin foil. All are potentially lethal to pedestrians. With the traditional sedans, car/pedestrian collisions resulted in the pedestrian rolling over the hood/winshield area. With the taller vehicles (trucks, SUV's, 'crossovers') pedestrians are forced under the vehicles with catastrophic results.
It's all about money period. You can 'claim' the public demands the larger vehicles, but really the public are sheep to the marketing forces, let's face it. This is the same public who elected a liar, philanderer, 5 x bankrupt as the leader of our nation (not my leader).
The government ought to demand the return of any funding provided Ford for development of more fuel-efficient cars. There ought to be a large carbon tax assessed on new cars upon their purchase, and a weight tax by States to fund road repairs as a result of these gas guzzling overweight useless vehicles. Odd how our vehicles reflect ourselves, isn't it?
3
Once again short term thinking by an American industry. Next time they go bankrupt, let them sink. They brought this on themselves and have no one else to blame.
3
This article is short on figures. What is Ford’s balance sheet and how much goes into R & D?
Maybe the real decision here is that Ford just cannot see itself competing with Toyota, etc who have strong efforts in R&D. Probably Ford sees itself waiting until the future reveals itself and then moving into ‘green’ tech when it’s clear which horse to back.
The risk is that Ford will not be able to catch up once the customer has found a home elsewhere. And coming in late to the game, where profit comes from high volume at low margins, gives advantage to those companies already tooled up and clued in.
A parasitic stance for Ford, and possibly a strategic error. But foresight and R&D is not Ford’s strong suit, a company long run by nickel & dime accountants, not engineers.
4
Yeah, gas prices have risen to 3 bucks a gallon here in less than a month. People are squawking. Where is that cheap gas ford pointed to?
2
Isn’t it interesting that college educated folks, who are the prime buyers of heavy, inefficient, gigantic trucks and vans, are also the very same people who say something needs to be done about global warming. Apparently, they think saying and doing are the same thing. It’s a sad comment on our lousy university systems here which train people into thinking words are the same as actions.
Well, time to take another trip on a jet plane which massively increases my greenhouse footprint because I need another vacation. Ta-ta!
3
Many Americans prefer SUVs because their own body sizes are similarly over-size. Gas guzzling vehicles are needed for over-eating, obese people. The impacts of climate change will eventually come crashing down on these excesses. Conscientious Americans are adopting lifestyles that are good for them and future generations. SUVs and people who drive them are emblematic of a careless disregard for others and our planet.
1
Cheap gas and shoddy roads make people want bigger cars. If Ford doesn't build them, someone else will.
Tax the gas and fix the roads.
Next problem?
1
Complaining about the price of gas is as American as apple pie. And is the first reason that no candidate will get elected on: Raise the gas tax.
Also, we know our Republican leaders too well. They are inclined to take any new tax revenue and use it - to reduce current federal income tax revenue. Yes, another treasure bath for higher tax brackets.
Fix the roads? Republican leaders won't allow that. They agree to one solution: privatize infrastructure to their donors and we pay whatever tolls they decide.
The "next problem" is the same as "original problem" - a red virus in our electorate that accelerates the number of incurable "mad sheep" who vote Republican NO MATTER WHAT.
1
Articles such as this make me despair over people changing their behaviors to positively effect Global Heating.
Ford makes these vehicles according to demands. They and their customers don't care.
Seriously, in western democracies, at least, can we imagine that people will drastically reduce their private car usage? Or air travel? Eat much less meat? Limit the size of their families? Reduce their consumption in general?
I can't say that we're doomed, but I'm not optimistic.
1
I am truly saddened by American car makers being motivated 100% by greed in this era of Trump and tax cuts for the rich and Pruit destroying Environmental Protection. My 2012 Chevy Sonic from GM, my first NEW car in 20 years, got 44 mpg the first year. Now it gets only 35 mpg! It is perfect for a single, short, retired person like myself. And the price was right -- cheapest car GM sold. I will need another Sonic in 5 or so years and won't be able to get one as GM has decided to discontinue this car. I can't AFFORD a large car. And I dislike I hate SUVs. Can't see the attraction. Intimidated by some of them on the highway. Golden Years become harder when you don't have the gold and don't want to buy what is available even if you did have the gold!!!
1
Ford is phasing out cars for the same reason that the radio phased out grunge and the fashion world phased out fanny packs: consumers have lost interest. Which means that volumes have dropped and former money makers are now money losers. That 35% market share that cars currently command is half of what it was just a few short years ago and it’s dropping fast. The most critically praised sedan, the Honda Accord, was completely redesigned this year and dealers can’t find buyers for this all new much improved model. Meanwhile they can’t keep their CUV’s in stock.
As Kitman acknowledges, Ford’s CUV’s are essentially just taller bodied versions of the cars it will no longer be selling. So if they’re the same thing, how can fuel economy be so much worse? Answer: it isn’t. The EPA says that the Ford Edge, the CUV version of the Fusion sedan that Ford is dropping, gets 24 mpg to the Fusion’s 25. The projected extra annual fuel cost is $50. If gas prices double, the Edge will cost an extra $100/year to gas up compared to the Fusion. I’m thinking that most people will be willing to pay the extra $100 for the privilege of riding in the roomier, more comfortable, more fashionable Edge.
And if fashion brings back the car one day, Ford can drop its rooflines just like Paris periodically drops its hemlines.
2
The only way Ford and other manufacturers of gas guzzlers will change their ways is if they lose money. I am hoping for a great surge in gas prices. Pain is a great motivator.
I'm on my fourth, and final, Ford Crown Victoria, which Ford discontinued in 2011. Ford had squeezed every nickel of profit from this mature but reliable platform. Now, it's choosing to focus upon SUVs and trucks -- solely for profitability, ignoring its green commitments. Prediction: in five years, gas will be $5/gallon, and a larger automaker with a less-robust truck line will buy Ford for its truck & SUV products. I'm thinking Volkswagen.
But I'll probably look to GM or Toyota for my next passenger sedan.
A Prius is about as fun to drive as a refrigerator. No thanks. I’ll keep my Jeep, no matter where gas prices go.
5
The article shows what happens when people have freedom to choose. Not everyone in the US wants a gas sipping low profile vehicle. In fact most don't. We drive long distances and these cramped vehicles aren't comfortable, don't hold gear, and you cannot see what's ahead. Forcing companies to give customers what they don't want isn't new, remember the food pyramid, and the all too apparent consequences of obese fatties who dutifully gobbled carbs and non fat meals. Well, our wide bodied kith and Ken want more room. Good for Ford and for the government to limit the damage of the puritanical CAFE standards that wasted untold energy and emissions by creating millions of vehicles no one wants.
1
Setting the idea of compassion aside for a moment - if someone wants to eat nothing but Doritos and get diabetes, that's their problem. If they want to pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, that's my problem (and yours). Also, with the way health care is structured in this country, someone's diabetes is everyone else's problem too.
4
This article could have been written by the buggy whip manufacturers on August 15, 1908. That wa when Henry Ford first produced the Model T. Here are supposedly intelligent observers busily discussing the pros and cons of gasoline engines to propel automobiles when gasoline engines are going to be extinct for the propulsion of automobiles in 10 or 15 years. We are always behind the Scandinavian countries in adoption of leading technologies. The price of battery-powered electric cars is already close to parity with internal combustion, and the battery price is diminishing rapidly.
Most of the problems with the automobile industry in the United States is political. Our totally corrupt political system in which “campaign contributions” can influence legislation has resulted in foolishly low gas prices with large profits to the campaign contributors.
If you want to help come join us, makeitfair.us. We want to get money out of politics so that we can compete with the rest of the world and quit our slide into a 3rd world country.
1
This opinion is a bit silly or posing this as a "Why" question. Ford is a company. Companies exist to make profits. The profit are in SUV's, not sedans. Thus Ford decides to make SUV's. Duh.
3
Another American manufacturing giant settles back into making stuff that's terrible for the health of this planet: gas guzzling monster vehicles, military grade weapons, and GMOs. A coalition of nations must destroy the U.S. in order to save the planet.
1
Companies that do not take sustainability and the state of the environment into account will not have a future. The gas prices are a ready rising so all the people who wanted a giant gas guzzler as their monument to prestige are going to have a nice abandoned yard ornament when they no longer can afford the gas. If people don’t start to think about the choices they make and the impacts on the future, we aren’t going to have one. Ford would be rolling in his grave if he saw how despicable his company has gotten.
1
So, Jamie, What's your solution? Ford claims to lose money on Fusions, etc. How, then, do you keep Ford alive (profitable) while building money-losing cars people won't buy?
2
Who would have thought, greed killing the hen laying the golden eggs. Trump's push to de-regulate the car industry's commitment for better fuel efficiency is very shortsighted, as it will boomerang as oil prices go up again. And California knows that and behaving responsibly seems the right thing to do. Now, if they can achieve the efficiency goals set with lighter S.U.V.'s, more power to them. As it stands however, Ford may be pulling a 'villain Shkreli' fiasco, with the help of a runaway E.P.A. willfully ignorant of the contamination of the environment. A 'crime' really.
1
Ford is anything but strategic. While this move might make sense with Trump in the White House, the rules will probably shift once Dems are back in control. Also, while gas is cheap now, history shows that it never stays that way. All kinds of factors from supply constraints and natural disasters to political instability will cause oil prices to climb in a virtual instant.
SUV's are popular when gas is cheap, they are far less attractive when gas spikes. Ford is effectively putting all of their eggs in a risky basket.
There is also a virtually unstoppable force shifting the automobile business to electrification. Ford is just too narrow minded and future-blind to see it.
If people don't want sedans, why is the resale so high on Camrys and Accords?
People may want used sedans, but that doesn't mean people want new sedans. The market is different for used cars than it is for new cars.
An old Detroiter speaks her mind. I will not, I repeat, I WILL NOT
bail out the American automotive industry the next time they find themselves in a financial crisis. And, rest assured, in the not too far distant future there will be another gas crunch. It's okay by me if Ford chooses to remain short-sighted 'cause my Prius and I can now thumb our noses at any gas station of our choice!
Kitman's article verges on clickbait for the NYT readership, combining SUV's, profit, and big corporations.
Ford may or may not be making a strategic and financial mistake. For those sure of Ford's error, they can short Ford stock, or invest in companies dedicated to small or electric cars.
For those who blame the consumers who buy trucks and SUVs, remember that these buyers are expressing personal and economic choices, and that manufacturers are responding as the marketplace should.
1
Has anyone else noticed gas is back around $3/gallon and seems to be heading up from here? This is at the same time interest rates are rising with housing costs - the economy is in an interesting place and things can change suddenly - lack of diversity in the car portfolio may hurt Ford, GM, and FCA
1
"But its decade’s worth of investment in developing more fuel-efficient cars is now taking a back seat to profit."
Wow. Imagine a for-profit company being interested in profitability. Stop the presses.
1
Letting the market decide. That is a novel concept for the New York Times, but then again, it did publish a puff piece about Marxism this week. Why let people decide what they want to purchase with their own money when an overbearing government can do that for you?
2
Ford isn’t alone. Toyota has dropped the 40 mpg Prius V in favor of the 30 mpg RAV4 hybrid. Short-sighted Americans want the SUV, whether they need one or not.
1
Americans simultaneously demand cheap cars made in the US by people paid a decent but not extortionate wage. That can't hold.
Ford's decision for North America will bite it on the rear. It will continue to make and sell Fiestas and Focuses around the world in countries that tax gasoline appropriately, while betting on the margins of SUVs and trucks in the USA. Good luck with that.
Just like the pentagon, Ford is fighting the last war instead of this one, same methods and exactly the same mentality.
1
Thank you for exposing the short term greed incentive of our car maker.s Let their children deal with climate change!
"The unwillingness of Congress to tax gasoline more heavily did not help. Nor did the readiness of the Obama administration to accommodate so much of Detroit’s pro-S.U.V. agenda in its regulations."
I think over time history will show that the Clinton and Obama administrations, and their Democratic cronies in Congress, at best put up only some minor and temporary resistances to the tide of the Reagan Restoration (to the Gilded Age) and were in fact very accommodationist appeasers.
Really, in the long picture, when short-term exaggerated comparisons wane, these Rockefeller-Republican centrist "Democrats" easily blend into the continuum of the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Trump sabotage of the American Experiment, which is on dire life support (and not getting much in the way of substantial pushback from the disorganized and incompetent (where it's not complicit) "Democratic" Party).
Bah, US and Western democracy, the supposed leading light and hope of the world, is dying of Greed. Yes, capitalized as it is the God of the primary American religion, rampant and reckless vulture capitalism. It is likely to exterminate the species as well. What will your Mammon do for you and your children then, oh wealthies?
"Don't judge the recovery by what Wall Street says! Don't too many people live on Wall Street!" - Jesse Jackson, 1992
As the planet heats up, Ford buries its head in the sand to make a quick killing.
In a totally unrelated Times article today about bacteria glutting itself into extinction because it can’t survive the resulting waste it creates:
“It’s no surprise,” said Simon Levin, a theoretical ecologist at Princeton University. “Organisms engage in actions that provide short-term benefits that ultimately can be damaging to the societies of which they are part.”
Enjoy your bigger Fords!
Five years ago I was all ready to buy a Ford Focus Hatchback but then started hearing about the lousy transmission and mediocre interactive display and didn't buy this car. I bought a Honda Civic (although I really wanted a hatchback) because I wanted the reliability of a Honda. If Ford made hatchbacks and sedans that lasted as long as Honda's and Toyota's, I'd buy a Ford car, not an SUV.
This is easy: money, money and more money!
The fix: price gasoline at it's true cost and stop subsidizing oil producers.
This should be welcome news for Telsa. The real future is all electric.
When gas prices inevitably go up and emission standards re-instituted, the American people are not going to have to bailout Ford, right?
This piece seems to cast all the “blame” at the feet of Ford on the supply side, and has nothing to say about consumers on the demand side.
Helpful to the discussion would have been points on why consumers prefer SUVs. Is it an arms race for perceived safety on the roads? More comfortable to ride higher up? The size of car seats and other gear in our lives that requires bigger cars?
Let’s start with the premise that the market isn’t typically irrational, or dumb. Understanding why there is demand for SUVs would help illuminate this issue.
3
To reduce the need for SUVs, America need more station wagons, for families who need to pack the kids and dog into their vehicle. Many of them buy mini vans or SUVs because they can't get a decent midsized station wagon. Ford could have made a Fusion wagon to capture some of that market, but then so could Chevy (Impala), Toyota (Corolla and Camry).
I remember all the stuff we used to get into our Dodge wagon before the days of SUVs. You couldn't do that now.
I purchased a Ford Fusion hybrid a few years ago. it is the first Ford I have ever owned. I love it. I love the gas mileage and not having to go to the gas station very often. when I heard they were stopping production I was very disappointed. I need a new car next year and it won't be a Ford. once again it will probably be a foreign car. such a shame.
No matter how you fold it, it is almost impossible to get an intact sheet of plywood into a Ford Focus. Sorry, it's gonna be a light truck for me for a few years yet.
1
SUV's are to the American auto industry what junk food is to the American agriculture industry. The high center of gravity adversely affects handling so they flip. (just ask Will Ferrell) The added SUV weight destroys roads and wastes fuel. The added size hogs parking spaces. SUV's are inferior and given the stark reality of climate change, immoral. I will curse loudly at every Ford SUV I see, as should anyone who cares about the future of their children.
I, for one, am disappointed.
I want a small car with manual transmission. I want to drive a car, feel the road, be one with the mechanics. That's getting harder and harder to find. Middle aged men in oxford button-ups in their Rams. Financial guys in their yuppy-Hummers, the Range Rover. All being price-gouged twice: once in gas consumption and once by the profit margins. The psychological insecurities that lead to SUVs and trucks are embarrassing. Our nation needs a shrink.... and it needs to shrink.
1
This one is all on the consumer, not Ford. They tried and the buying pubic turned up their nose. So Ford is simply responding to the demand which ironically is their job... to provide products that people want in order to generate a return for stockholders. So unless Ford is not going to turn its "green" efforts to improving the fuel efficiency and lowering environmental impact of SUV's, which there is no evidence to suggest they won't, then I applaud them for playing the hand that was dealt them in a proactive and responsible manner.
1
I live next to a a grade school where the mother's pick up a nd drop off their kids Most of what of them driving from what i see maybe 90% are SUV 's. Their husbands drive pick up trucks. My wife's SUV based on a subcompact car gets 20 mpg. My 8cyl gets 21. Gas has gone up to over 2.50 a gallon. At least a 30 cent rise in the last few months. Is Ford being premature giving up on cars from micro to midsize a bit premature? If the past is an indication there's going to be a lot of used SUV 's for cheap. 50k is alot for a new vehichle and climbing. 72 months to pay for it.
Will self driving cars convince people they can get smaller vehicles without fearing they at are putting their families lives in danger. I don't think so. We are in disaster mode now created by the media. Climate change, hordes climbing the border fence, even volcanoes are going to get us. You need a bug out vehicle and that is a truck or SUV they believe.
1
It is about time that ford officially got out of the passenger car business. Their Pinto, which would burst into flames on contact, was emblematic of a poorly managed enterprise. More obese SUV marketing will continue their bad practices.
By abandoning competition within 35% of the automobile market, Ford has found another way to diminish American innovation and union labor.
Good riddance.
I kept driving my 1994 mid-size Toyota T-!00 one ton rated pickup well beyond its natural life as I appreciated a compact, maneuverable truck with an eight foot bed ( with a cargo canopy) that would keep sheetrock and 2x4 studs safe out of the weather.
After Toyota ended the line no truck manufacturer has made a small truck with an eight foot bed, even though the compact Toyota Tacoma is now larger that than the discontinued T-100.
I finally replaced my truck with a Ford F-150. It's so different from the cheap, bare bone pickups of my youth, with many of the comfort features of my old Volvo XC90.
Incredible that as I kid I scrunched down in my dad's old '54 Jimmy embarrassed as he dripped me off at school fearful that some of my friends might see me---getting out of a truck.How times change.
Now these vehicles, luxurious, shiny and often non-utilitarian are status symbols which I can somewhat understand as I tool around in my own glistening behemoth. As unwieldy as the F-150 is by comparison to the T-100( that had the same cargo capacity as my Ford) the feeling of, sitting up above other vehicles does have some allure. Except it seems every other automobile is a pickup just as big and shiny, or bigger and more luxurious than mine.
Doesn't the tariff on small trucks which I thought was 20% keep foreign competition at bay? Let us face it the American legal and health care and military industrial tax and wealth absorption system has made the US a manufacturing wasteland. Why hire Mexican cheap labor in Michigan when you can hire the same Mexican for ten times less in Puebla and not have to worry about workers comp or health and education for his wife, girlfriend and seven kids.. From a financial standpoint Ford has no choice.....and I drive a Ford Fiesta.
This article provided interesting information and analysis, concisely. Thanks.
Detroit has a long history of short-sighted decision making on the part of executives.
The first spike in gasoline prices (in the 1970's) caught them by surprise and allowed the Japanese small cars to get a toehold in the US car market when US manufacturers had nothing to sell but gas-guzzling behemoths.
A similar event occurred in the early 2000's when gas prices spiked and US manufacturers belatedly started making smaller, more fuel efficient cars.
And it will happen again. Gas prices will go up, demand for massive SUVs and trucks will go down and Detroit will be caught unawares.
1
When we replace my families second car a 2005 Subaru Forester in a couple years, assuming it continues to last, we are strongly leaning towards an all electric vehicle. Our other car is a 2015 Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk which works great for off road and hauling things around. When we got the Jeep it replaced a sedan, the sedan had replaced a Jeep. But we had also gotten the Forester (a crossover wagon) in the interim. I guess my point is, I hope the all electric sedan offerings improve and expand in 2 years from now as we don't need another SUV. One is enough. I'd like to buy American, but I don't have any qualms going foreign if the car that best suits our needs and budget isn't make by a domestic company.
When you drive in a land with crumbling infrastructure, a truck or suv seems like a better choice. I got 20 mpg in a rented Silverado last week so maybe for some folks buying a six cylinder truck seems like a good fit.
I bought a Chevy Impala after the Volvo wagon died with 200k on it and we love it. GM seems to be building a decent stable of passenger cars, including hybrids and plug in electrics. I find Ford’s decision to be just another badly led us corp taking myopic views of the future to try to improve short term ROI.
I think the fundamental problem is that the American auto manufacturers are not very good when measured against their competitors.
For example, see https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2016/04/10/24-7-wallst-best-wo...
They specialize in pickup trucks and SUVs because that is their home turf: many Americans prefer these vehicles and there is not much market for them outside America. As for other types of vehicles, the competitors' products are generally better quality, better value, more desirable. At the same time, the US car companies are important to the US economy. They would probably not survive a a policy of high gasoline prices - it would kill the market for what they do best and they would lose to the competition in the rest of the market.
This is true in other industries as well. This is why there are so many climate change deniers in America. Once you accept that climate change is real, there is nowhere to go but down.
Having grown up in the Motor City and being a child of a Ford Engineer, this seems incredibly short-sighted to me because they are abandoning their customer pipeline. Customers buy small cars when they are younger and move to bigger cars when they are older (and have expanding families). A customer that buys a Fiesta or Fusion is more likely to consider another Ford customer when they are ready for an upgrade --- and they aren't as likely to trade brand lines is they don't currently own a Ford. Plus, SUVs have a much, much higher rollover risk than cars, a fact Ford should be well-known to Ford, considering that they have an entire staff of attorney dedicated to defensing against rollover cases involving their current SUVs. I guess Ford figures a few multi-million dollars lawsuits and paralyzed customers is a small price to pay for higher profits. Nice. My next car definitely won't be a Ford, that's for sure.
3
It's interesting that this article misses what I imagine is a key factor in this move by Ford which is Scott Pruitt's intention to roll back Obama era fuel efficiency and emissions standards, even suggesting that they intend to fight California's stricter than federal limits. Ford is certainly betting that the gas mileage and emission standards they were going to have to meet in 2022 (and that cars would allow them to achieve) are a thing of the past, or at least, not going to be enforced. Welcome to the new EPA, a group that seems in need of renaming...perhaps BPA, the Business Protection Agency.
We are so going in exactly the wrong direction with our transportation alternatives. Car travel in this country is a nightmare and flying is even worse. Why is there no decent train system in this country? If I were in charge, Ford and the other U.S. car manufacturers would be nationalized, dissolved and their assets used to create a new Detroit building safe, comfortable and efficient trains like the ones they have in France, Germany and the UK. In the meantime, guess I'll just stay home--
3
Basic math. For a family of four, it's cheaper to drive than take a train.
When you get to a vacation destination, you can visit tourist sites, picnic, and see mountain streams. Grab breakfast items at a grocery to save money over eating out. You can't take your kids camping via train.
Why is this debate always framed around policing the choices that people make? Consumers are rationale beings. They balance cost of fueling, performance, comfort, styling, practicality, etc when making a purchase. The current problem is that gas is very cheap, so fuel efficiency is not heavily weighted in the purchase criteria. The real solution is higher gas taxes. Our infrastructure can certainly use an investment boost, and we'd all benefit from consumers WILLINGLY buying more fuel efficient vehicles. Remember, companies like VW, Honda, and even Chevy offered cars that achieved up to 45 MPG back in the early 1980's. And people loved them - remember the fascination with "hot hatches?" Those were awesome cars that easily got 30+ MPG , were fun to drive, and cheap to own.
America never misses a chance to regress.
2
America is responsible for climate change. We were the ones who started it and still, per-capita, create twice the greenhouse gas emissions of the Chinese. We're literally the ones destroying the world and our children's futures.
This is directly traceable to the criminal lies and lobbies of the big oil, airline and car companies, especially the first, over the last 50 years...and their lackeys in the Republican Party. The official position of the ruling party is that climate change isn't important. Every one of the Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Lindsey Graham, dismissed its importance.
In fact, it's the greatest threat to human existence that we face.
We see here the consequences of that denial. Americans, especially angry whites, resentful at losing their global primacy, are blithely destroying the world in revenge. Overstated? Not a bit. That's the reality behind the rise of an ignorant liar as president. Over forty percent of Americans support him.
We need politicians who will speak loud and clear on climate change -- and call out the Republican liars who deny it. And we need them to explain how building clean cars and mass transit, gigantic industries we're leaving largely to the Chinese, is the smartest plan for our economic future.
5
This excellent post is the absolute truth, a rare commodity these days.
What is astonishing about Republicans is that they give priority to their own assessment of a scientific question when they are not scientists, let alone climate scientists. Their ignorance is obvious, e.g., Inhofe bringing a snowball onto the floor of the Senate to "prove" that global warming is nonsense. These people are so ignorant that they don't understand phenomena that have to be understood statiscally. If the stock market goes down one day, are we in a bear market? Does the link between smoking and lung cancer mean that if you smoke, you *will* get lung cancer, guaranteed?
We have an unusually large consensus among the world's climate scientists that warming is occurring and human activity is the causal factor. These people have devoted their professional lives to the study of a complex subject. The President of the United States, who wouldn't know a book or a computer if he fell over one, and who got his scientific education at the Wharton School of Business, dismisses that consensus among trained professionals, experts, and instead imposes his own utterly ignorant opinion on the world, on us, our children and our grandchildren. What he has done is criminal, in my opinion.
Grandpa's excellent post is the absolute truth, a rare commodity these days. :-)
This ridiculous action comes at a time when gas prices are rising rapidly. Sounds like Ford is intent on shooting itself in the foot.
It's about the money and the bottom line. Automobile companies do not do things for the public good unless it benefits them as well. These same companies, or I should say the American companies, have convinced a good many Americans that SUVs are the way to go. When people wanted compact cars in the 70s and 80s the Big Three ceded that desire and market to the Japanese. The small cars they did manufacture were pieces of junk.
I'll do what many of my generation have done: continue to buy small cars that have good gas mileage that are not manufactured by Ford, GM, or Chrysler. Why? Because the experiences I had with my first car, a Chevette, were so horrible that GM lost me as a customer. Cars from the other 2 weren't much better. And this is how America lost the market on cars and so many other things. Funny how we used to complain that "Made In Japan" meant cheap. Now it's the other way around.
Management drove customers away and it's doing that in many other areas as well. Globalization may have been great for corporations but not so great for American consumers and workers.
1
Money - simple reason. Americans are the most ignorant people on earth. Just look at the last election. The oligarchs are driving up the price of oil. Soon, we'll see all those SUVs on used car lots, just like the last time, but this time we won't have energy efficient cars to buy thanks to the Trump Administration, and oh, the oligarchs that are really running the show.
2
Ford better be praying neither Israel, Saudi Arabia, or the US hits Iran in the new few years...one blockage of the Straits of Hormuz and their strategy is in tatters.
2
That's why there are major pipelines being built across Saudi and other ME countries. They more than recognize the need to diminish the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz, and especially the use of it as a threat by Iran.
Plenty of oil offshore and Mexico.
Pretty sure the non-Detroit automakers are quite happy to sell their multiple SUV variants, with those high profits, as well. And it's not just in the US, it's globally. SUV/CUV sales are increasing worldwide.
I love my small car. Great turning radius, easy to squeeze into parking spaces, and why should I need more? All of us single persons should be driving small cars!
1
Can we cut to the chase here: Americans are obese and desire comfort for their oversized rear ends. They want bigger vehicles that they don’t have to bend down to get into. Or struggle to get out of. Americans don't need that many pick-up trucks, but they want them because they believe it makes them look more masculine. And - like the president - too many of they have small hands and need all the masculine signifiers they can get.
3
Your comment reminds me of that old song "God Bless My SUV" by the Capitol Steps, which I will quote in part:
"...my Daddy wasn't fightin'/In Normandy that day
for the right to drive a Hyundai/I refuse to live that way...
And I'm proud to be an American/with a car that fits my rear
The cash I put down would've fed a town/in Somalia for a year..."
Extremely funny, if it weren't so pathetically true
1
The sedan is dying because we're not buying them. Americans are SUV crazy. It makes no sense to me, but it's reality. Ford seems to be overreacting a bit; I would consolidate sedan models instead of killing them off.
1
I stopped reading right at the headline. Greed is the answer to the question and kapitalism means that lies are accepted as being true. Anyone can do anything. Especially when it comes to selling. You're fired! Too bad about you and yours! Here, let me be chauffered into my gated community to keep you unwashed out! I'm the POTUS and the bucks certainly go into my bank account, they just don't stop here!
No lengthy article needed when a one word answer will do: money.
Very true. Money.
The Ford F-150 is the best selling vehicle in America. Their SUVs as well as pickup trucks, SUVs, and crossovers by all carmakers sell better than hotcakes.
Why wouldn't carmakers sell what consumers WANT to buy?
Ford car sales are down 24% as customers opt for SUVs. Ford’s cars are excellent vehicles - reliable, efficient, fast, attractive and inexpensive - but customer don’t want them. And so, Ford is responding to customer demand by increasing its supply of SUVs. You would rather Ford double down on a losing (and low margin) product category and surrender market share to competitors. Why not simply blame stupid customers for buying stupid SUVs? The point is, you can’t blame the company for responding to unmistakable consumer demand. Blame American consumers.
1
The US automakers are labelled too big to fail based upon volume and gross margin. By decreasing their volume they risk losing that label. Therefore, this is probably the dumbest executive move in history.
1
After the recent newsworthy headlines about gas prices climbing, I had to check to see if this was actually a story in the Onion...
"One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.”
Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai
1
Darn those consumers and their pesky preferences! Government coercion now!
2
We didn't learn when gas prices exploded in the 1970's, and we won't learn now. Unfortunately, the average American consumer is a dunce, acting like a child in a candy store.
Wonder if Ford resetting its Mexico expansion to please Trump is another factor.
1
Seems to be all guys commenting. It reminds me of the old Hollywood oaters where a cowboy’s primary relationship was with his horse. The radical modern version of it is Easy Rider, where that relationship is with a motorcycle, not a horse, but horsepower nevertheless. An SUV or a truck has the same logic, presumably representing the same Hollywoodized view of the cowboy and the horse—a vehicle which could go anywhere, roads not needed. Freedom is defined as male narcissism in these Hollywood stories and the auto industry has been happy to go along with LA culture, it’s been profitable even though it appears to be disastrous for the environment. And Ford’s now doubling down. Whee!
1
Money?
Profits and more profits. Well done FORD. Now I hope you go bankrupt. Let us never bail out FORD.
Give Ford their corporation tax cuts and watch-out! Wait, oh.. It turns out that stockholders, CEO's and Boards LOVE PROFIT and without tax-saving incentives to invest - WELL, let's just keep it all!
Now, we know why Trumpers are chanting "Nobel, Nobel" in Michigan - they got their dividend checks!
And, gas will always be cheap and Flint's water will always be [MET ACCEPTED STANDARDS] to drink.
Can't wait to hear that GM / Ford were caught by surprise and near bankruptcy from economy imports. So, yes, proceed with two models - Bigger and Biggest - the President gives "an A-plus rating".
In 5 years, apply for corporate bail-out - .. oh, wait .. you already received investment help through the 2017 tax cut. Sorry, Charlies!
They're not realigning or changing policy ?
They are PIVOTING ? I am sick to death of this latest buzz word already ,,,
Yank business at its finest once again. No long term strategic thinking, but that's OK, we'll cut to the bone and boost our profits in the short term. Why? Because when disaster hits, we don't need to worry. The government will bail us out, and our executives will continue to get their nice big fat bonuses.
I wonder if anyone noticed the "cheap gas" isn't so cheap these days. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice (thrice, four times??) shame on me. I'll hang onto my C-Max hybrid and pursue an EV.
BRAIN = 1 / CAR
1
Will Ford’s NASCAR drivers only be driving Mustangs, or will they only race in the truck series?
1
Basically, NASCAR cars(and trucks) are basically the same underneath, all tub and tube frame hand built one offs, the difference being in the engines primarily, and even these are subject to uniform rules, being all V8s and with restricted displacement. They didn’t even switch from carburetors to fuel injection until a few years ago. Except for aerodynamic concerns, the body style can be anything they want. You definitely cannot walk into your local Ford, Chevy or Toyota dealership and buy one.
1
It was just a few years ago when gas was more than $4/gallon that dealers were stuck with thousands of unsellable SUVs. Taxpayers will be stuck with paying for corporate bailout welfare when this stupid gamble doesn’t work out.
3
This would not describe many drivers of these huge things, but lots of Americans are too darned fat to fit in a normal-sized car.
There are clear exceptions--I see tiny mommies in sportswear tucking little foo-foo cocooned babies into the back of the suburban baby fortresses and four-door trucks. And some small cars fit plus-sized folk well. Two of my 300+ friends could easily get into a Mini Cooper's front seat, and one of these big boys owned a Mini.
Maybe the next fuel crisis will mean fatso must get out and walk a bit. Then he or she will fit in something smaller than the Battleship Missouri. That would be a win-win for fatty nation.
1
Adios Ford.
1
Fair enough, Ford. May your badge on a vehicle signal to everyone else on the road: idiot at the wheel. Meanwhile, the educated, responsible consumers will walk (and drive) away from you.
Doesn't matter. In ten years or so every vehicle is going to be an oversized electric golf cart. See the Tesla business model. This is a temporary fix for shareholders.
1
Wall Street's ideology of infinite growth + short-term profit = doomed planet, and Ford, like so many other companies won't buck the Wall Street machine that demands chewing up and exploiting finite resources like the doomsday machine in Star Trek. We bought a Ford a few years back primarily to support them in producing more sustainable, greener cars. Won't make that mistake again.
Yes I call it "Cancer Economics", this dumb idea of perpetual growth. It's going to kill us all eventually.
I'm 70 years old. Just as my parents' spending habits were affected by growing up during the depression, mine were honed in the 70's oil embargo days. I will forever seek economical fuel efficient vehicles. This trend of SUV use has me shaking my head in disbelief. Why on earth would someone choose to drive such an inefficient object and for what gain? Having lived in Alaska for many years I can fully understand that some require a four wheel drive vehicle. But those people are really few and far between. I managed just fine with front wheel drive in the city during all sorts of nasty road conditions. The size protection argument is bogus... there will always be a bigger vehicle on the road with you.
Ford is now doing what American corporations do: maximizing profit. A healthy environment will always take second place to this attitude. I suspect that global meltdown will take place after I'm dead, but it won't be too long after at this rate.
1
They have a Wall Street money man in charge who wants to make a quick buck at risk to the company. Gas prices surge and sedans will again be the wise choice. Restricting the choices of American consumers is very unwise.
Survival comes first
They are going to build what sells. More people are driving SUVs which block the view of those who drive sedans. It is not the car manufacturers forcing the buyers to get an SUV, it is the buyers choice. It is not logical to continue to make cars that won't sell.
I am disappointed because I have always bought Mercurys and I was expecting to buy a Ford sedan in a few years. If gas prices stay high, maybe they will reconsider.
4
When robots replace humans as drivers, the world will need a lot fewer mundane anonymous sedans--as few as 10 percent of what are currently produced. The only cars people will own privately will be specialty cars. Ford sees the writing on the wall and is abandoning a market that is sure to shrink over the next 20 years. Smart move, I say.
Ford isn't "pivoting back to SUVs." They produce numerous crossovers, which are really just the modern equivalent of a station wagon, only smaller and far more fuel efficient. Buyers have long shunned conventional sedans in favor of the more useful and equally compact crossovers. Ford's lineup, along with that of other car companies, includes efficient gasoline crossovers and electrified models. Too much whining over nothing here.
2
Why is a Green car company pivoting back to S.U.V.s?
Because Ford is concerned with the environment and the health of people in general.
Back in 1999, I moved to Montana from northern California. It was evident my 1990 Miata would not be happy on the snow-covered road leading to my mountain house, so we added a 1998 Ford Explorer to the entourage.
It got the same mileage as the little Miata.
I'd look into the actual mileage of those supposed "gas guzzlers" before condemning them.
As a footnote: You really want to Go Green? Stop producing offspring. No amount of "green living" by you can offset the harm done by your adding another body to the world's population.
3
This is only about the bottom line.
Keeping in mind that only 20 percent of Americans own most U.S. wealth, that's a hefty 65 million people.
Sure many of them are children.
But they are the children of the wealthy.
They want big cars.
1
I recently overheard some students complaining that a classmate "takes up sooo much space" which seemed to mean that he talks about himself and his opinions instead of letting others talk.
It's a good phrase. In a way, having too much unused car capacity, too much stuff, eating too much food are all things Americans see as a kind birthright, but Ford's indulgence of the bloated American sense of over-consumption makes it seem dated and regressive.
4
People can rationalize all they want but most don't need a "crossover" (which are tall station wagon) nor an SUV (which can go off road). Family sized are smaller. Even station wagons with similar cargo capacity will still get better fuel efficiency and have better accident avoidance than its taller crossover sibling. The fact is marketing psychologists know how to play people to pay more money.
In reality the idea of having bigger vehicles - bigger houses - bigger yards - to fill with more unnecessary stuff exemplifies the trade deficit everyone belly aches about. No savings (for individuals as well as countries) means more trade deficits. People like buying big vehicles (even though they cost more) to feel big - not because they are the best choice. Same way the federal budget does with you know what.
2
so much for keeping manufacturing in the US. (MAGA, anyone?) or for buying american made products. meanwhile Ford continues producing smaller cars for the European market. face it Trumpers, there is no "made in USA" ... everything is a global market. if you want to buy a US car, maybe you need to go to france.
1
So all of those trucks and SUVs are now going to be made overseas? What?
Profit is what drives corporations.
If we want to modify their behavior, we have to modify the economics, modify the demand.
Gasoline is taxed in Europe and way more expensive.
I don't see SUVs in Europe.
A lot Americans love their SUVs. They don't really think about global warming and their children and grandchildren.
7
I own a six year old Countryman, MINI’s version of an SUV. It is highly maneuverable, very quick, great for commuting or long trips, holds a lot of stuff, gets 24mpg in town, 35 on the highway and has been reliable as an anvil. If BMW can do it, why not Ford?
2
No view of the US car market is complete without understanding the role of regulation. A large portion of car design is driven by regulation and legislation. And in this case, Ford's move is an almost obvious reaction to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulation which requires automakers to meet ever-increasing fuel economy targets under the threat of financial penalties.
But there's a wrinkle. There are different CAFE targets for passenger cars and light trucks and the regulation pushes Ford to have the best possible fuel economy in each of those classes. So Ford can sell you a Fusion (sedan) which likely hurts its Passenger Car CAFE number or it can sell you an Edge (crossover) which likely helps Ford's Light Truck CAFE number. So, even though most versions of the Edge are less efficient than most versions of the Fusion, the Government is rewarding Ford for selling an Edge vs. a Fusion. Of course, this is an unintended consequence, but it is also a somewhat obvious reaction.
8
Perhaps Ford has seen the future of autonomous vehicles and transportation networks like Uber and Lyft, and concluded that many Americans are about to stop buying cars because they no longer want to own them because they can get their mobility from transit, shared vehicles, walking and biking. There's no question that substituting SUV's for small sedans would be a sustainability disaster, but if this is a response to a shrinking vehicle market, it is both smart and sustainable.
1
Companies are choosing to produce profitable products! Sensational!
Isn't the story here that customers are willing to pay more for bigger, less efficient vehicles, in spite of their ostensible commitment to "green values." This should not be a story about car companies but about the American public, which once again is voting (this time with dollars) for the greater evil.
4
Once again an American car company making bets on consumer preferences doesn't take into account gas prices that seem to be on a inexorable rise. When gas hits $3 per gallon again, consumers will once again stifle their desire for "tough machines" and go with economical ones.
Until car manufacturers can design big vehicles with the same fuel efficiency as lighter vehicles, ignoring the price of gas will do the same to them now as it has done over and over in the past.
1
In lower Hudson Valley, NYS, gas prices are already at $3.00/gal. The summer driving season is upon us and could $3.50/ ga. be far off?
Smaller sedans are fine for urban folk without children. They don't work if you only have one car, have kids, and travel rural distances.
4
Somehow they were just fine for decades, before marketing convinced people otherwise.
8
Hmmm, I can only surmise that you are not familiar with pickup trucks, based upon your response. Many rural people need the hauling and or cargo capacity of a larger vehicle. Try hauling something large from the hardware store in a subcompact.
Hmmm, Model T's were just fine too (as were horse and buggies before that).
I went from a minivan to a hand-me-down Nissan Sentra. That didn't quite work for 6-ft long lacrosse D poles or my kid's tuba. The car I drive now is a Honda fit, and it does fit me, both my over-6-ft high schoolers, and the baritone Sax, tenor sax, trumpet, and Tuba (all at the same time!) along with all three of our backpacks. Ever seen a baritone sax case? It could double as a coffin. Unless I start hauling hay or livestock, this is all the space I need.
5
This article is seriously overblown. Modern "SUVs" the author complains of are rarely the heavy, boxy, gas guzzlers of memory. They are essentially tall station wagons, sometimes with all wheel drive. For example, I drive a Volvo XC90 crossover. Volvo sells essentially the same vehicle as the V90 wagon, and S90 sedan. Mechanically, they are virtually identical, to include the 2.0 liter four cylinder engine. Aerodynamics and weight are also almost identical. Similarly, Ford's Eco Sport, Escape, Edge, Explorer, and Fusion SUVs are all just tall station wagons. People apparently like to buy them. Why shouldn't Ford invest their money making the cars people want to buy?
27
Indeed - They are under just tall wagons. But - Extra height doesn't come without penalties - no matter what the marketing department tells you.
7
I beg to differ, simply on your own numbers. According to Volvo's website, the XC90 has a 22/29/25 city/hwy/combined mileage, whereas the V90 cross-country (still a raised model) has 24/34/27. We don't know the rounding, but that's an almost 10% combined difference, and more than 10% highway.
I think that qualifies as slightly larger difference than "virtually identical".
Moving on to the final question, I do think its poignant. A corporation should manufacture vehicles that appeal to their customers. However, there are a few caveats.
First, Ford won't stop making those cars. They'll stop selling them in the US. That's almost awkward, why cede a huge market when you're not even exiting it?
Second, it's worth viewing on whether a company is focusing on the quarter-on-quarter ahead of the long-term profitability of the company. If the automakers are setting themselves up towards a cliff again, this could be troublesome.
8
Interesting how the author completely omitted what those penalties are — an obvious fact void in an otherwise vacuous OpEd.
1
Here in Europe, Ford will continue to make small cars and sedans, the kind that sells here: Ka, Fiesta, Focus, Mondeo...
If the price of oil rises again, Ford will again sell these in the US.
What kind of cars does Ford sell in Mexico and South America? Yep, small cars and sedans also.
38
I wish that these models sold in Europe were more available in the US. They are not only efficient, practical, smaller and quieter but perfect for cities. Whenever I rent a car overseas I am always amazed how much great gas mileage they get. I'd buy one in a second. I especially like the Twingos and Picassos. They are so cool looking too.
8
I see it as an end-run around the American worker: once Ford sees it as advantageous to sell cars here again, it will just import them from China or wherever. Bye-bye, Dearborn, Wixom and Flat Rock.
3
Ironic that they are doing this just as the price of gas is going up again. Their timing is impeccable. I just hope we won't be asked to bail them out because I'm tired of helping companies that go out of their way to make poor decisions.
7
Maybe we have fewer small and medium sized cars because we have fewer small and medium sized people.
9
That SUVs are taller is more of a factor than most people realize. Ford may have caught on to this, but their choice to cut back on production of sedans is the wrong approach: They should redesign their sedans to be taller.
Taller cars, ie, higher seats, taller doors, are much easier to get in and out of, and the driver's (higher) view of the road and traffic is better. This is not a significant difference to Millennials, but Baby Boomers are finding a bigger and bigger difference now that they are getting old. (I'm 83, the Silent generation, and quit driving 10 years ago; my wife cannot sit comfortably on a seat as close to the ground as most sedan seats.
SUVs also have more internal room than sedans so that passengers are not so cramped.
Ford should come out with a new line of sedans that are big and high, like SUVs. Oh, wait, that's what SUVs are.
3
After seeing Ford hybrid cars' performance, we were considering purchasing one, but I guess we won't be doing that now. Have fun with your yesterday's gas-guzzlers, Ford.
2
The low price of gas and, inevitably, profits are the story for Ford and every other vehicle maker. Twas ever thus.
This is great news! Sanity is returning to the automobile industry. Consumers are once again king, not the green pests.
I'm hoping that when Tesla goes bankrupt, that all the subsidies for silly electric cars can be phased out.
Maybe we'll even see all the green nonsense come to an end. It's looking like we'll see some serious cooling https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2018/05/01/sunspots-vanishing-faster-tha... .
2
There are many more choices these days
No need to buy from Ford GM or Chrysler
They have abandoned any sense of social responsibility long ago
3
We recall despairing of America's commitment to combat global warming back in the early 90s when Ford came out with the Explorer. At a time when America was becoming more crowded with cars, people began buying those behemoths, which today look like subcompacts. Today, our land grant university town is packed to the gills with frat kids driving around in enormous pick-up trucks that are completely ill-suited to its residential neighborhoods, that would be perfect for, say, golf carts. Our boomer generation will be leaving a sad legacy, three pathetic excuses for presidents, (Clinton, Bush, and Trump), and the SUV.
Obviously the answer to the title question is "money" and we have to assume Ford being "green" was just a p-r ploy. But it is important to note no car is "green" - they all take a lot of energy to move thousands of pounds around, they all require roads and pavement, parking, they all kill or injure humans, pets and wildlife, they all erode cities and contribute to ugly sprawl, they all deter healthier walking and bicycling and erode transit service for those that need or want it.
2
I remember reading a great book in the mid-eighties called The Reckoning by David Halberstam. It basically chronicled the huge gains in market share made by the Japanese auto manufacturers and the huge share losses for Ford and the other U.S. car makers that had occurred in the prior 10 years or so. According to the heavily researched book, Detroit refused to build smaller and more fuel efficient cars and stubbornly stuck with the land yachts that had high margins. This was even after the Arab oil embargo in 1974 which alerted the world to the reality of fast rising gas prices.
While reading the book, I was embarrassed that the Americans had such a short-term, quarter-to-quarter focus on profits while the Japanese took a much longer view. But I thought “well, at least this book is out now and a best seller. Detroit will certainly sit up and take notice and we won’t have to worry about them making these same mistakes again”. Hmmm….I guess I was wrong. Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.
5
Dealers, as has been long known, often turn customers away from the green car they specifically wanted, even if it was cheaper in both the long and short run, because money. The customer is usually not a corporation, nor armed with a good accountant and lawyer, so the house wins the car(d) game.
Given that alone, I'm shocked that ALL of the car makers[1] haven't followed, or preempted, Ford's magnificently idiotic Great Leap Backward—whether because the dealers won't let them make money to stay green, or because the maker *itself* is on the take from the fossil burners and thus telling the dealers not to be sane. That's how American "free" "market" corporations "compete": to stiff us the hardest.
Fortunately for nature and humanity, and like other "covfefe"-backed casinos, such houses of cards tend to collapse. And the whiplash temperature change here from still-cold April 30 to summery May 1 tells me one way they likely will.
Have the batteries, first aid, flashlight, and insurance ready.
[1] Except Tesla. But you knew that.
3
Ah yes, the powerless consumer “turned” from what they really want (or thought they wanted) by a nasty salesman, just like the hapless votes who get forced to vote for the “wrong” candidate because some rich person or group paid for an ad! Woe is us. Did it ever occur to you that maybe people actually prefer another vehicle once they see and experience the difference themselves?
2
Yet another attack on our environment facilitated by a corrupt President, Republican Congress, and EPA Administrator.
I remember the late 1960s and early 1970s that produced the Clean Air Act during the Nixon Administration.
If you don't think we could return to the choking days when major American cities could barely be seen through the dense smog, think again.
Plus, why don't we just turn over the rest of our economy to China, Japan, and South Korea and be done with it?
"America First" is an Orwellian slogan for "America Last."
9
Did we miss the Executive Order or EPA fiat that mandated Ford do this??
The big American car makers are today what other big companies (most recently T-Mobile and Sprint) aspire to be: too big to let fail.
The reason why Ford can safely bet on gas guzzlers is because they know, when they get it wrong again, Uncle Sam will bail them out... and they know the next President will have a hard time enforcing tougher fuel economy standards if it would hurt the "great" American car industry.
2
I will never in my life forget what the salesman at my local Ford dealer told me 2 years ago after seriously inquiring about buying a Ford Fusion: “You don’t want this thing”
3
There are many Fusions on the roads of the U.S. and those of us who drive them are very happy. I hate being told what I don't want and shop accordingly.
1
One factor I don't see mentioned in the comments is the growing trend of young people foregoing car ownership all together because they live in the city. The Ford Fiesta was a well reviewed small car aimed at the young market. It didn't sell well. Why buy a car when you can just rent one (Zipcar) when you need to go somewhere for the weekend? The rest of the time it drains your bank account and has to be parked somewhere. Out in the burbs, people have kids, dogs, junk to haul around, and have plenty of driveway space to store it, so they buy bigger cars. I don't like the trend and the lack of fuel economy any more than anyone else here, but maybe Ford is just responding to market forces. I do hope they keep their commitment to electric cars, but I have my doubts. They are chasing higher profit margins into the sunset. The auto is going to have a different role in society in this century, and Ford might just be conceeding they are going to become a niche company rather than a behemoouth.
1
Compact SUVs such as the Ford Escape are fairly similar in weight to a compact car such as a Fusion or Honda Accord. True, the added height makes it less aerodynamic but the increase in wind resistance is most pronounced at high speeds. Older folks find the increased seat height more comfortable to get in and out of. The higher seat height may have a safety advantage in 90 degree collisions and with modern stability control the higher center of gravity makes rollover less of an issue. Compact SUVs are not going to destroy the planet.
Unfortunately, after decades of decline, motor vehicle collision deaths are on the rise. This will cause some to desire a larger vehicle which because of its larger mass will fare better in a collision.
My wife was T-boned on the driver's side by a compact pick-up while she was driving a Mazda 5 compact SUV. Her car was totaled and she believes her side airbag saved her life. We replaced the destroyed compact SUV with the same make and model but we certainly thought about getting a larger SUV.
4
Nice to see the Big 3 making decisive moves to accelerate climate change, as well as making streets more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians. Way to go, Ford!
1
In 1975 families drove Ford Country Squire wagons: 4500 lbs, V8 engine, 3 rows of seats, 12 mpg.
Now they drive Ford Expeditions: 5400 lbs, V6 turbo engine, 3 rows of seats, 17 mpg.
Americans love big cars. The only way to force them into small cars is to raise the price of gas.
2
Ford is insisting on building cars that people want to buy instead of more fuel efficient vehicles that don't sell? And by doing that they make more profit? What an outrage!
The number of cars of each type that can be sold should be set by the government. That's the only way to ensure that the right cars are bought, because people making their own choices tend to make the WRONG choice.
1
This is why we never should have bailed out the automakers after the crash in 2008. They are failing the nation and the planet.
3
@Martin: Ford was not bailed out.
As an owner of a Ford Fusion hybrid, this was extremely disappointing news to me. For years, I drove a Toyota Avalon, which I enjoyed, but it gave me 25 mph at best. The Fusion was much less expensive and gets over 40 mph. It's been extremely dependable, handles well and has surprisingly quick acceleration. I was looking forward to buying a new one in a year or two. As an individual who only likes the comfort and handling of sedans, Ford gives me no choice but to look at the higher priced, less fuel efficient Japanese cars. Considering the rising price of fuel, this seems like a very stupid, poorly thought out decision, based on quick profit but no long term outlook.
8
This is disappointing. I was considering a Ford product after decades of driving a foreign car only because the company seemed concerned about environmental impact. I'm also tired of getting a stiff neck trying to look around the fleets of 150s clogging up our roads. Who on earth needs a pick-up truck to commute? It's back to Toyota for me.
4
Ford has forgotten the lessons of the past when they were higher fuel prices left them high and dry with nothing to sell. And they have had help from the Trump administration with continued tariffs that eliminate foreign made truck competition.
Their new Ranger pickup is good example. It is based on the economical and practical commercial truck used everywhere on the planet except North America. For the American market however, Ford has determined that small business people don't matter they have morphed the Ranger into the Ford El Gordo Ranchero. They have done the near impossible -- they have produced the non utility utility vehicle and the pick up with a bed so small that it is incapable of picking up anything (outside of maybe a bag of dog food or weed and feed). But it does sport fancy wheels and has Wi-Fi connectivity to support 10 devices and is ready for those dangerous safaris to the shopping mall! You'll see no promotional photos of hay bales in the back of this "life style vehicle" but plenty of shots of wheel spinning dust being kicked up in formerly trackless wilderness.
So what we have here is an example of a company that now doesn't care about those who formerly used their vehicles to earn a living nor about those who care about the environment and instead have decided to make short term gains by making silly wanna be vehicles with high profit margins. Too bad.
3
Keep this story in mind any time someone claims “everyone wants strong action against global climate change.” It is the same thing with any other high minded change: people are behind as long as someone else, e.g., the infamous 1%, pays for it or makes the change.
1
Ford better not break the dyes for the Taurus & Fusion just yet- gas jumped 40 cents a gallon in 3 weeks for no reason.
2
This is America, or indeed how any human "civilization" works. Memory is very short. The oil shocks of 1973 are ancient history. Never mind that we are fracking our way to despoiled land, sea, and air. Under the spell of Trump we are lemmings.
3
I bought a 2017 Ford F-150 low option load. 36 gallon tank. The Miracle engine, 2.7 L Twin Turbo. Now 12 months later and 13K miles it has a total MPG of 20.7 with 10% towing a 7x7x17 cargo trailer. I recently got 24.8 mpg for 552 miles, no trailer. I drive exactly the speed limit.
I love this base model truck with tow package. My VW buses, I had 3, never got over 19 mpg and seldom made the speed limit.
Further more I Dyno tested Ford engines for decades. I worked for Tier 1 supplier. I am impressed with Ford.
I support better engines and right now gasoline is greener that electric cars.
Make Solar, Wind, and Ocean wave electric power a mandate in USA. And someday soon we may have ideals once again.
2
Ford didn't have to cede the sedan market. Look in your parking lots. How many Honda Accords and Toyota Camries, and Hyundais do you see? How many Fords do you see compared to the smaller Kias and Hyundais out there? How many Tauruses and Fusions are you looking at? The market has bypassed Ford.
We don't buy green cars from Ford, even when they make them.
I drive a minivan bought a thousand years ago when my kids were small and I needed to be able to put in multiple car seats and tote a lot of stuff around. Today, more mothers drive an SUV for the same reason. We don't drive green because, among other things, the car seats limit how many kids you can stuff in a car.
And the young men out there? They are choosing sport SUVs and pick-ups, the siren vehicle of the American Male.
Ford needs to sell things to survive, what they sell is driven by what customers will buy from them and not others. People will buy sedans from foreign companies - BMW, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai. They buy trucks from America. That is reality, green or not.
2
I guess I won't be buying Ford then. I won't be buying any SUV at all for that matter. I don't need to buy an SUV just because Ford wants to sell me one. I don't like the vehicles and I don't want one. They're dirty, expensive, uncomfortable, and no fun to drive. The storage space is generally awkward and most people will never need any of the features an SUV is designed to provide. How often do you drive in snow or dirt? I probably have you beat by a large margin and I've never needed an SUV.
I suppose I'll buy foreign next go around. VW has a nice wagon with manual transmission. They even have a manual version with AWD if you need it. Works well enough for skiing and camping but much more practical around town. Not that we drive much around town anyway. Ford can keep their SUVs.
4
Ford's decision is a textbook example of how prioritising profits over producing well-design and innovative product has had such a pernicious affect on the American economy. This began back in the "Greed is Good" Reagan administration and several decades later, American industry has been hollowed out and once great companies like General Electric are shadows of their former selves due to mismanagement. The American landscape is littered with all of the factories that closed due to this shift and the angry workers left behind smelled a rat and put one in the White House in the sad hope that he'd somehow or another turn back the clock. It's a bona fide American tragedy.
4
Do you feel that Ford should keep producing cars that people do not want to buy.....because it is "politically correct" to do so?
2
An announced phased increase of gasoline taxes (with a beginning jolt) would help correct this trend.
But too many Americans are too easily led by truck advertising (as they are about political advertising) to buy (and vote for) things that harm them (while enriching the greedy and corrupt).
Our politician and corporate leaders are to blame, but so too is our nation of sheep gladly entering the slaughter house of American capitalism.
1
Why? Because even in my middle class street no one is buying sedans, except the Silent Generation.
2
The most insidious automaker strategy is selling the public on four-door pick-ups.
I would not feel safe driving in today's traffic in a tiny car. Too many drivers are more focused on their cell phone, and many don't know the significance of a yield sign or a lane=change signal.
I am pondering the purchase of a new small SUV. I would be looking at the Ford Escape, if Ford didn't advertise on Fox News.
1
I only buy cars designed and engineered by German companies. Quality counts!
After all, the Germans can engineer a car that knows when it is being tested, and turn off its emission controls when it isn't.
1
Perhaps Mr Kitman needs a lesson in basic economics. If a car company stops producing one vehicle in favor of a different one, it's because they know they can make more money off the one they are making than the one they decide not to make. Of course, Mr Kitman has no experience running a company or a car company. Which means: Mr Kitman is ranting and raving like a little child.
4
Yes, as some have already suggested, history does repeat itself. And yes, when much of the rest of the world pays twice as much for gas, and large are SUVs are the bastion of the US market (read:limited foreign competition), why should we be surprised?
The consequence of the actions of Ford, and Fiat Chrysler earlier, will be that we are opening the door now for the Chinese (previously the Japanese and Koreans) to take over the economical sedan market segments in the future. The Chinese produce some 28 Million vehicles (US market is about 17M) and they have not even started exporting as their production is being consumed locally - for now.
So next time gas prices go up - and some experts are predicting $300/barrel gas in the future https://bloom.bg/2KwHQT4 - you are sure to be driving your Chinese made car (which could have the Ford logo on it too). Back to a new future.
Nobody who cares about cars takes Ford, Dodge, Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, Lincoln or Chrysler seriously excepting maybe the Mustang and Corvette.
When the fuel prices drive Americans out of the thirsty SUVs and Pickup Trucks, Ford will have little to offer them unless they want to import cars from Europe and China. Chrysler is already there and GM is moving in that direction.
Jim Hackett has been tasked with growing Ford and Americans are not buying the cars Ford is making. I grew up driving Ford and my first new car was a Ford, but since then have not liked what they offered. They are ugly, use cheap looking trim, are not very reliable, are overpriced and do not hold their value. They have been mailing it in on cars for a long time.
The next time fuel prices force the fickle American consumer out of Trucks and back to cars, Detroit will have nothing for them. Let's not bail them out again.
I really like my all electric Focus. I hope this line will be continued.
2
i'm perplexed that Ford was unable to make and sell the Fusion profitably. With the number one sees on the road, I'd assumed it was a moneymaker for them. We've been very happy with our 2013 Focus hatchback, one of three of the 22 cars I've owned over the years which I can drive for ten hours without getting a sore back.
We'd planned on replacing it with a new Focus in 2019, but alas ....
It appears that the only version thatFord will offer then is raised (elevated?) 1.5 inches and tarted up with fender adornments. Nuts.
1
Ugh. Again, why unregulated capitalism is a curse on society. The short-term seesaw of high and low gas prices is not a sound strategy. But of course corporations only look short term, to appease the stock holders. We were fed that baloney back in the 80s... that we could invest our way to riches in the market, otherwise known as the biggest legalized gambling scam in the world.
It took the place of good jobs and a society based on a strong middle class. And now we have billionaires running everything and serving only themselves.
1
Do you mean short term like the 10 year auto product cycle?
This article is moot. At an average price of $35,000, most Americans can't afford a new vehicle of any kind.
2
Data doesn’t seem to prove that notion. It’s just like saying people can’t afford to travel yet every plane you get on I jammed with ordinary folks and families. Plus, with cars, most buyers seem to want every option available,not content with a stripper.
Ford has been producing low quality vehicles like its other two Detroit neighbors. The cars are mainly sold to rentals, fleets or subprime customers with dollops of financing and incentives. The subprime auto bubble of the last few years burst starting in 2017 and subprime delinquencies are now higher than during the great recession. The result is that Ford has no real paying customers and finds its vehicles just gathering dust on the dealer lots. Sooner or later, the weakest players have to bite the bullet and cut production and it is now happening with both Ford and Chrysler getting out of small cars. This is also an opportunity for some financial engineering with big one-time write offs and hide the true bottom line picture for a couple of quarters. Green Ford like Quality Ford are just marketing slogans and no customer takes them seriously. Ford owners just worry about costly repairs and never ending recalls. Like in cars, in small and medium SUVs, Toyota and Honda are the leading brands. Ford may be able to hide in heavy duty trucks for a few years but the real issue is always quality, reliability and dependability where Ford gets an F.
Not sure what you're basing this on -- Fusions and Tauruses are great cars. Until this unfortunate pivot by Ford, they really seemed to be on the right track. I've had very few problems with my Fusion Hybrid, just normal wear and tear.
2
Having grown up in Michigan, in close proximity to the auto industry, I guess that I should not be surprised by Ford's myopia. After all it was the younger generation of auto execs that virtually destroyed their own industry in the seventies through the nineties, only to have to be saved by the US taxpayer. (Don't buy into Ford's claim to virtue that they didn't have to be bailed out. While they were smart/lucky to get ahead of the curve and store up cash, without GM and Chrysler, Ford's suppliers would surely have also gone down the drain, and Ford would have followed them soon after.) While batteries are making great strides, millennials and the fastest growing car markets (i.e.: China, India) are clamoring for more fuel efficiency and electrification, Ford decides to go in the opposite direction. Ford used to represent some of the best of American industry: innovation, speed to market, leadership, vision. Now they will be a niche player, focused on a niche that will be shrinking, if not gone in a few years.
1
I’ve never understood the shortsightedness of American car manufacturers when it comes to energy. It certainly influenced my car-buying choices, though. I got my license after high school, two years before the 1973 oil embargo. I drove a VW Beetle because mom wanted me to learn stick. I remember noticing gas prices rise from 17 cents to 33 cents/gallon in those two years—before the oil crisis. Then the fun began—long lines, self-service, and worries about fuel economy. After 12 years with VW’s, I gave American cars a try when shopping for a family car. It took 12 years for the car industry to produce a few passable sedans. But the Toyota Tercel wagon I bought in 1983 was miles better in fuel economy, handling, and design. Since then I have been a faithful Toyota customer, with a van, two sedans, and now on my 3rd Prius.
The point of this is that at a critical point, age 30, married with a second child on the way, I found my brand, and fuel economy was a huge driver of my choice. I gave the American cars a chance in my search, but they failed—even given 10 years to get their R&D up to speed. A decade! Their myopia and stubbornness when faced with the obvious lost them a customer for life, when competing with a well-designed product produced abroad. Certainly in 35 years since 1983, there have been improvements, but not enough to win me back as a customer. Gas prices are rising once more. American car companies’ retreat in a globalized world signals huge change afoot.
1
So a "green car" company is pivoting back to cars that are gas hogs by contemporary standards because gas is relatively cheap. What could go wrong?
49
Gas hogs??? You must live in some other reality than I do.
Another once great now dying American company. Another one to divest. Notice the market capitalization of Tesla is now close to or greater than Ford's. Musk should buy Ford and fix it up.
I honestly do not think that Ford is "dying" or unprofitable. They are just making adjustments for the future.
1
It's cool, Toyota has got me covered.
53
And honda and many others....
2
Ford is only deciding to manufacture and sell what consumers want. Recall, they are in business to make money, not cars. If we want cars that produce less pollution we need to internalize that public cost into the private ownership cost of cars. There are at least three ways to do this that have been shown to be effective; CAFE standards, much higher fuel taxes & car registration taxes based on the weight and fuel economy of the vehicle. Before we get all bent out of shape about new taxes it is useful to note that the taxes could be set to be completely revenue neutral with small fuel efficient vehicles receiving a subsidy that is funded by the taxes on larger vehicles. CAFE effectively does this at the point of sale.
3
Our car companies are giving us what we want, what we buy when we go to showrooms and make our free choices. That is not to be blamed on the car companies.
It is first of all consumer choice, but that choice is shaped by law, not by a fiat by car companies. They have offered things we won't buy.
What law? Well, our government exempts SUV's from the regulations covering cars. Result, more SUV's.
What would happen if fuel economy standards applied, raising prices, and if we put a proper weight tax on them as cars instead of as if trucks? Different consumer choices would happen, and car companies would rush to supply it.
The same is true of true "green" technology. Right now we have half hearted and temporary subsidy. What if we applied a tax to new cars that were not green, and shifted it to the green car subsidy?
We get what we want, and we blame car companies for giving it to us. We'd blame them for not giving it to us too -- how do people feel when there is a shortage of something? Fortunately, that does not happen often, which only emphasizes where the decision is made and blame lies.
3
My current car is an SUV -- Toyota Highlander Hybrid -- that I bought because I live in the country (it handles incredibly well in the snow and off-road), I often haul groups of kids around, and we also need the cargo space. I get almost 28 MPG with this car, in spite of the fact that I'm often hauling stuff, I often need A/C (eats gas), and I live in the country (hybrids get better mileage in the city, with stop-and-go traffic). The car is 11 years old, has 180,000 miles on it (we also take it on vacation), and has never given me a bit of trouble -- runs like a top. I have made back the $3K premium I paid for a hybrid model many, many times over -- and this would have been true even if gas had not been so high, for so long. I am utterly baffled that *anyone* buys a non-electric or non-hybrid car in this day and age. Cheaper to operate and better for the environment. Baffled.
4
They make this announcement when gas all over the country is now heading toward 3.00 per gallon. All the best to you, Ford. They have lost their vision. Sad to see.
60
Naturally, Ford has paid back/ will pay back the 5.9 billion to DOE (right?). In the face of ever more compelling evidence for planetary catastrophe with respect to human habitation, it's unfortunately unsurprising to hear that pure greed still dominates the philosophy of multinational auto-makers .
1
I wish cars for the US market were more like the cars for the European market in regards to towing capacity. In Germany, where we were stationed for 10 years, it was common to see a fancy passenger sedan or wagon with a hitch. Germans would often have a utility trailer to haul the oversized or nasty loads that would trash a car or wagon interior. People who did seriously dirty, heavy hauling had trucks, of course, but the rest of us could use our cars to tow utility or RV trailers.
Most US market cars have negligible towing capacity, narrowing our choices to a truck or SUV oversized and overpowered for 90% of the driving we do.
4
There's also the issue of HOAs that prohibit storing utility trailers.
1
As a collective, Americans are luddites. It's a shame. While the rest of the world is leading on fuel-efficiency we're reverting back to unsustainable ways. I can't really blame Ford. Americans need to educate themselves about alternative fuel vehicles like the Honda Clarity and not resort to using the word "Hindenburg."
Personally, I like my Chevy Volt. I have a 40 mile commute each day and I fill up only after 1k+ miles. I had to buy the car at Carmax because the local Chevy place near me was dead set on selling only large cars and telling outright lies about what the Volt could and could not do. (It automatically switches to a gas engine, by the way, after the battery is depleted).
My extended family routinely tells me things that are factually incorrect about how electric cars work, run, and are maintained despite having never driven one.
Americans should know to demand better but they keep giving companies a pass on fuel standards that other companies in foreign countries and even some of the same companies in those countries seem to be able to meet (even by using diesel--gasp).
My 1993 Toyota routinely got 30+mpg even though it was rated at 28 . .. that was 25 years ago. If Americans had the sense to demand it we would be so much farther along.
5
Ford disappoints me greatly in their decision to revert to heavy investment in SUVs.
Trucks, I get that. People are always going to want and need their pickups. Concentrating on research and development of better fuel efficiency in their pick up line would be truly innovative and demonstrate their commitment to the long term health of the planet, despite fluctuating gasoline prices. But their C Max line of hybrid cars is where the passenger car emphasis should be. The size inside and out, the height, and best of all, the fuel efficiency (not just for the consumer’s bottom line, but for the planet’s, as well) makes these cars a line they can be proud of. When will a major automotive company demonstrate real commitment to the future of the planet by consistently providing consumers increasingly safe and “green” choices?
1
The reason for all of this is not just profits, but Wall Street. Would love to see a follow-up article focusing on how and what corporations sacrifice to appease the whims of Wall Street.
1
A few years ago I needed to a new vehicle. My 1999 Ford Ranger was at its end and I had decided that I didn't need a truck anymore. I wanted a car -- not a truck or SUV or crossover -- just a comfortable, safe, fuel efficient, modestly roomy car. That sweet "midsized family sedan" class had many options: Toyota Camry, Hyundai Sonata, Honda Accord....but the one that was consistently at the top of the reviews was the Ford Fusion. It was exactly what I was looking for and I thought I'd be a Fusion owner for life. Not anymore, I guess.
I guess it's not in the best interests of car companies to tout the benefits of certain types of vehicles over others, but I could easily say why I much prefer my sedan to even our other vehicle, a 2010 Subaru Forrester. It's easy to get in and out of, it's really comfortable, it has all the space I really need (as opposed to the space I think I might need), it gets great mileage (using cruise control and good driving techniques I can easily surpass its rated highway mpg). The only thing I miss is hauling lumber from Home Depot. But even then, with fold down seats you can fit 6' 2x4s in a Fusion.
How many people really need what trucks and SUVs offer. They are not intrinsically safer and few people use them for really hauling lots of stuff. I don't suffer visibility issues in my sedan and parking is easy.
I sure wish some marketing executive could figure out how to convince people that sedans are great!
3
It takes a village to make a progressive company that does the right thing. It's time we (consumers) step up to the plate and show firms the direction. The days when companies solved social problems by delivering a product or service are gone. Companies cannot do what's needed without active support from consumers and investors. In other words, this too is up to all of us.
1
The American Market is not suited for small car. Small cars have been tried before and has never worked. Ford is heading in the right direction. Don't figure out how to sell a car American does not want, try to make he vehicles we do want better.
1
Any data to support your position that the entire country isn't suited for small cars?
2
The short-sightedness of large public corporations in search of immediate profits for investors allows disruption from startups that make the older behemoths become irrelevant quickly. The large corporations then have to divest, merge, and buy disruption at the investors' expense. I would take the bump in stock price and run away as an investor. Sell, sell, sell.
1
It is interesting to read the comments and see the location of the author compared to the tone and content of the individual comment.
In general, I see people from the concentrated population areas - especially the northeast and the California coast - are appalled with Ford's decision.
Since I live in what you consider "flyover" country, I have to say that we have a Corolla and a pickup truck, neither one new. The Corolla gets the most miles, but it is mostly parked on weekends. Why? It won't do what we need it to do. The truck can haul things in the back without trashing the inside, and also pull a trailer with whatever we need on it. That has a lot to do with the need for pickups and SUVs.
Most of this nation does not have mass transit. I have lived in places that did, and don't care to do that ever again. I value the serenity that you can't get in a city.
Ford is making decisions based on the foreseeable future. When that future changes, they will too. Their sedans are just as good as others, but they certainly don't have the social cachet as a brand. Just remember that Mercedes is made in Alabama now and BMW in South Carolina, both solid Red states.
7
Always "greedy corporations" and "profits" lead these discussions, but the main driver, if you will, generally gets a huge pass - the public who buys these vehicles. If American buyers had a clear preference for sedans, small, medium or large, then the manufacturers would pump more of them out.
Small cars are vastly improved over what they were a few decades ago, but they remain small and thus limit their practicality for many people, a reality that a lot of non-car owning people choose to ignore. And while more comfortable than in the past they still lag in that area as well, partly due to simply dynamics that relate to size, wheelbase, etc. Further we again see the biases of the automotive press in this piece, with the gratuitous "and hurts handling" remark tossed in...look at any of the automotive magazines or online reviews and you will see that they almost always choose "sport" models to play with. Sorry, but a lot of drivers do not want to feel every bump in the road for the conceit that their minivan is some sort of sports car. And no, 0-60 in 7 seconds is only "slow" for auto writers. It's a long time absurdity.
I think Ford is unwise to drop US sedan sales, but they are in business to make money not please the chattering class. Americans can change such things with their now purchasing decisions.
7
My Hyundai Tucson AWD is capacious and has a 1.6 liter turbo and an auto DCT. It gets 30 mpg on average and has great acceleration. Very popular in Europe.
However, Hyundai is discontinuing this thrifty combo here -- most likely because US drivers are unwilling to make the small adjustment necessary for an auto DCT -- as was also the case for manual transmissions in the past.
Ford -- like Hyundai -- is just responding to "American exceptionalism" -- the same exceptionalism that keep us using the English system long after England and everyone else has gone metric.
3
It can't be said often enough: for-profit corporations are amoral. They exist for no other reason than to make investors wealthy. A CEO who fails to achieve profit goals will be fired and replaced with one who does.
This by itself is not wrong. Americans have benefited greatly from the capitalist system for 250 years. But capitalism and the free market, while engines of our wealth and influence, will not deliver any social good that is not a byproduct of profit.
When a clean environment, fair income distribution, civil rights, equal opportunity, quality education and other social goods conflict with investor profit, regulation is required to balance the profit motive with the many other things we need for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Anyone who denies this is just protecting their paycheck.
8
Get over it. Ford is just giving their customers what they want. Most people want an SUV or Crossover vehicle. They are much more useful than the traditional family sedan. There is more cargo space for hauling stuff for weekend projects, family vacations, and bringing along the family dog. It’s the station wagon of the 21st century. The newer mid-size and compact size SUVs and Crossovers are much more fuel efficient with the turbo charged 4 cylinder engines replacing the traditional V6 or V8s. Most vehicles will be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2025, so the gas guzzling argument becomes moot. I’m buying Ford stock!
5
I have been looking for a good passenger car to replace my 15 year, 156k mile Volvo S40 which has become increasingly expensive to maintain.
There are two philosophies. One, rational and matter of fact. I would call that "mom car". I think it is hard to beat a Prius or Corolla or Civic in combined fuel economy and no-drama reliability under mild driving conditions.
On the other hand, commuting 50+ miles on a highway, you need good pickup and a solid frame. You get some of that in mom cars, but towards the higher end. But if you are going to pay more for quality (as in resilience and collision safety), European brands still seem to make more sense. Volvo and Audi pass for "luxury" but in reality they make family passenger cars.
My point is that the economical mom car sector is dominated by Asian brands, and quality, resilient passenger cars are dominated by European brands. I could see myself buy a Ford Focus or Fusion out of a kind of patriotism, but I would have serious second thoughts.
I think Ford are only acknowledging reality. They are good at muscle cars, trucks, and SUVs. Mom cars and precision driving machines are not their thing.
Long ago driving 'company cars' cured me of ever considering buying a Ford, Chevy or Chrysler passenger car.
2
A report like this is written by persons who live in cities. These little, fuel efficient and electric cars are not so useful in the countryside and Ford knows this from truck sales. Just getting in and out or many of these little cars is a headache. Here, in the country, a car needs room for four people and a load of stuff from Wal-Mart.
As to profits, I am always confused by those who can't grasp the way a business works. Of course Ford seeks profits - that's why (how) it has shareholders. No profit; no company.
5
MY Hyundai Ioniq hybrid (Korean) is an agile, and very comfortable ride....my last fill up yielded 56 mpg. Summers I commute to my job 250 miles round trip. I'm a landlord and haul tools and supplies all the time. I'm in my 60's (but in good shape-not overweight)-and have no trouble getting in and out of this sleek, zippy little car. Do I sometimes wish I had a truck? Yes, like this weekend when I want to rent a sod-cutter at the big box store----and that's what friends are for
1
The visibility from low riding cars is a safety consideration. Riding higher gives a better view of the traffic around you, especially when others are driving 15 to 20 miles and hour faster than the speed limit. Also riding at wheel level of a trailer truck is not very relaxing and certainly does not feel safe. So the extra price of gas-guzzling SUV or crossover is worth the price to improve the odds of making it home. When everyone drives a smaller car at legal speed limit and obeys traffic rules, then a small car may make sense. Untill them people will want to ride higher and have a car with a high PCM (Percentage of Collision Mass).
3
$3 / gallon is cheap gas? Coulda fooled me.
1
Adjusted for inflation, it's fairly low by historical standards. But the critical question is, do consumers consider it low enough that buying a gas-guzzling SUV appears affordable? Evidently yes.
It's interesting that capacious, low-riding "wagons" (formerly "station wagons") have retained their popularity in Europe, but are nearly obsolete in America. One reason, I suspect, is that with so many SUVs on the highways and interstates, drivers feel it's safer to buy high-riders for better visibility. In any case, the article should have mentioned the increasing popularity of compact and sub-compact SUVs, which are nimble, relatively fuel-efficient, full of new safety features, have ample and flexible cargo space, and still ride high.
2
We can always decide to buy smaller fuel-efficient cars instead. Let’s all agree to that. We need to be the change rather than being lorded over by corporate decisions that do not have anyone’s best interests at heart - even their own in the long run.
14
Why bother having any consideration for the future when you can have profits now?
An ideal I think we should all consider is to not buy more that you need -- that applies to clothes, houses, and vehicles.
Unless you have a practical need for hauling people or materials, I struggle to understand why you need to buzz around town in something that big that gets so few MPG.
10
Basically, the SUV/CSV models are cash cows compared to the smaller/higher fuel efficiency vehicles. The company can charge large premiums for the AWD/4WD, and they have sold them as 'safer', 'sexier' and so forth in advertising. Outside of some examples, like the Subaru Forester, most of these have 6 and 8 cylinder engines whose gas mileage is pretty low. Some of the shift has been away from minivans (which also are not great on fuel) because they are 'soccer mom' cars, but a lot has been from sedans and other cars that tend to be more fuel efficient (the one survivor at Ford? The Mustang, a modern Muscle car, which also do well).
The problem is going to be when the price of gas goes through the roof, it is going to be like it was several years ago, where people whined and complained about the cost of filling up, you couldn't give these vehicles away, and people whined for the government "to do something" about the cost of gas, and this will happen again, GOP congress people will scream to release gas from the strategic reserves, demand that we give huge incentives to drilling and refiners, and everything up to including a war to 'take' 'our gasoline'. People in the US assume that cheap gasoline is a God given right, and then whine when the market takes that away. The big problem is these aren't 'leisure' vehicles, people are driving to work in them, long distances. Once upon a time an SUV was that, now it is transportation for many people.
7
Ironic that on the day this is published, gasoline has hit the highest price since November 2014.
The impulse-buy trucks and SUVs purchased in the last several years will soon glut the used car market when their drivers balk at $100 fill-ups.
It seems that Ford's business cycle is out of phase with the economy.
6
When they dump those behemoths, I'll be on the lookout for an F-150 4x4 for our farm, without the four doors that suburbanites love (if I can find one!).
I use a large pickup sparingly (about 2K miles/year) to actually do work and not commute, and those dupes who have to have the biggest and best will be selling them at firesale prices during the energy crisis that will come sooner or later.
1
Not mentioned in this article is one devastating problem with SUVs, especially the larger ones, that I believe dwarfs all other concerns: they obscure much more of the road ahead than do normal-sized cars, and as a result I believe they significantly increase the number of auto accidents and deaths.
13
The "invisible hand" of the free markets will always reach out for one thing - whatever generates the highest return. If you want safer vehicles, greener vehicles, or alternatives like public transit, rail, etc. it takes regulation of some kind.
The free market has no regard for the past or the future - just the NOW NOW NOW demand from shareholders for return on investment.
Kauffman's Rule 10 seems to apply here, if we want greener car companies:
"10. Don't fight positive feedback, support negative feedback instead. Don't poison pests, support their predators. Don't order people to have fewer children, make it more profitable for them to have small families instead. Don't ration energy, raise the price instead (and give the money back by cutting taxes somewhere else, like the social security tax). And so on. England used a version of this rule for centuries in European politics. Whenever one nation or group got too strong, England would throw its support to the weaker side. Don't try to weaken your enemy, strengthen your enemy's enemies instead. "
There are a lot of Kauffman's rules that apply to this situation. It's too bad more people don't know about them.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/02/kauffmans-rules-8-14.html
2
Unlike last decade I have seen very little social commentary and protests against the SUV. Remember ELF? SUVs were actually a political debate during the Bush II era when they were seen as a symbol of American greed, disregard for the environment, and war in the Middle East. They were almost a social taboo by 2008. Ever since sales recovered around 2014, through, I’ve seen almost no opposition to them. Just another symbol of American exceptionalism normalized under Trump.....
5
Ford is making a business decision about profits. Which has nothing to do with a political or moral decision about what's good for the country or the world. One of the main reasons we have a democratic government, in theory, is to set the rules for businesses to make sure their business decisions do not conflict with social necessities.
6
Not even a decade after being bailed out by taxpayers for producing gas guzzlers that no one wanted to buy...yes very profit seeking indeed. Ethical? Our business culture cares not.
Our current car is a Ford C-Max plug-in hybrid. A very good car, but now abandoned by Ford.
Our next car will not be a Ford. We have had several Volvo wagons in our past, and Volvo is going electric. Problem solved.
8
So gas prices go down for a nanosecond and people flock to buy gas guzzlers? Doesn't take a deep knowledge of history to know gas prices will go up again, in fact it's already started around here - about 50 cents a gallon over the last several weeks. I predict a glut of slightly used gas guzzlers on the market soon.
6
Keep in mind that these big vehicles get nearly double the MPG they did a decade ago.
No, I don't like the bloated things, but their relative efficiency helps to explain why folks flock to them. For now.
2
I was given a Ford Taurus as a recent rental car and was very impressed with it; enough that I told myself I'd consider it the next time I was ready to buy. That would have been the first Ford I would have ever owned.
Now, sorry Ford, you just lost a likely customer.
Back to Subaru or Mazda.
6
This nicely shows the limits of environmentalism through free market capitalism. That is, we don't need regulations on pollution because corporations have a financial interest in protecting the environment. Corporations are people and apparently will breath the same air, drink the same water, and walk on the land as people-people. I kinda give Ford and other industrials a pass. They're in it for the money. My bone to pick is with the third way environmental groups and so called "smart regulations" democrats. They bailed on lobbying for the environment and started collecting big checks from industry and finance to provide greenwashing services. Thing Sierra Club taking a $25 million check from an oil and gas dude to promote gogo fracking. EDF to provide third way environmental muscle for corporations. And the organization who give VW the most sustainable corporation in the world award two weeks before the diesel emissions scandal became public. Gas is going up right now, but will go down in price once Saudi Arabia finishes its Aramco IPO. US does produces a lot of oil, however, it doesn't have as much oil in reserve (sitting in the ground) as Saudi Arabia. Thusly, the House of Saud can send prices up or down at will. Sadly, there's still too much money in burning oil and gas - lots of it and fast. Corporations see climate change as the next generation's problem to deal with.
3
I knew this all along when Ford dropped Mercury Mariner Hybrid from its lineup. Even it is a small SUV , it is the greenest , safest and most economical car I ever bought. My 2006 Mercury Mariner Hybrid is still going strong after 310,000 miles. It still gives me 28-30 miles per Gallon (down from 34 miles per Gallon). Please Ford, bring back Mercury Mariner Hybrid. You will find a lot of green buyers.
2
This is such an easy question to answer. Profits. They're higher on the big stuff and miniscule on the little vehicles.
3
I have a "green"SUV, a hybrid Toyota Highlander and I love it. It is possible to make a larger vehicle with better gas mileage and lower emissions. The problem is most Americans don't want to pay for it. Ford has made hybrids so that shouldn't be the problem so maybe they should try to make their hybrids with more oomph to power those trucks and SUVs that Americans desire. Perhaps it is that Americans identify too deeply with the image that their (big) automobiles project and their insecurities are part of the problem?
4
Of course now that that Ford has reneged on the terms of their Loan they will surely be made to pay it back ?
Sorry - had to get a joke in 1st ...
7
I'm not sure how Ford ever considered itself the American "green" car company. There are only two American car companies with serious R&D and production in viable electric vehicles; GM and Tesla. In my opinion, the Chevy Volt is hands-down the best green vehicle made, with its 50-mile electric range to take care of most trips, and a backup internal combustion engine to handle long road trips, all for under $40k even before tax rebates are factored in. There are no other plug-in hybrids that can compete with those specs. Furthermore, the hatchback Chevy Bolt is the reasonably priced 250-mile electric car that the world needs, and for now with Tesla struggling with production line problems for its competing Model 3, it's the only game in town. I've always felt that GM doesn't get the green street cred it deserves (and Toyota gets too much, with people ignoring the fact that they make the gas guzzling exercise in irony called the "Tundra."). Ford, on the other hand has always seemed to me like a second tier player in this market.
12
My family has worked for Ford for three generations now. They read the market well in the 2000s, I think they are making a big mistake now. I'll probably be buying SUVs in the near future as I live in an area that gets hit hard with snow, but I just paid $2.93 a gallon for gas, and I've noticed it's been creeping up the past several months. By summer it will probably be over $3.00 a gallon in my area and people will be flocking back to cars again. I'd hate to see the only American car company to weather the Great Recession have to turn to the American public for a bailout 10 years later. We may not be so willing.
17
What a radical idea. Car companies are going to sell the vehicles consumers actually want to buy. Even more radical: they are doing it to maximize financial returns.
It is always interesting to hear commentators bemoan business decisions driven by profitability. Americans have come to view businesses as community service organizations, designed to make only enough profit to survive. We have forgotten that profitable companies actually invest, expand, hire and produce returns to shareholders.
I don't purport to know how best to run a car company. But neither does anyone in government or journalism. The decisions concerning what mix of vehicles to make should be between Ford and its shareholders. For the sake of the economy, I wish them every success.
3
The problem is that outside forces (esp fuel costs) help determine what cars consumers actually want to buy. And a car company can't reshape its lineup without a 3 or 4 year lead time. I agree it's Ford's decision to make but it strikes me as a very dangerous and risky decision. And as we have seen, when an industry this large collapses they don't invest their way out it; we do. And Ford has been getting it so right: I drove Hondas for years and a 2012 Ford Focus is every bit as good a car.
3
I get it that all things being equal, increasing size and weight of a car reduces gas mileage. However, it seems like everyone has suddenly forgotten that Ford has committed to building hybrid, plug in hybrid, and EV cars across its entire fleet. Ford is not the same old company they were in the 00s. They are not going back to just gas guzzling big trucks and SUVs.
1
Our family started with a Honda Civic but it only lasted a bit 100k miles before it was low on compression in one cylinder and blowing blue smoke. We moved to a Ford Taurus because it had a bench front seat, something not found in any import. It was the first three that we eventually bought and managed 200k miles out of each. Along the way we found ourselves driving two cars to go places so we got a pickup we still have it. The Cummins engine would get about the same mileage in the winter as a Taurus as we live on a hill, and much better than driving two of them. When it came to replacing the Fords we found they didn't have much to offer were much more expensive.
Our son bought an older F150 truck as his first car but when the 'cash for clunkers' program came out he ended up with a new Hyundai that a dealer made a mistake on when it was advertised a loss leader, and we got a very good deal on it. One daughter needed a new car so we bought a new Kia Rio for $8000, another loss leader. When someone hit and totaled the Taurus a daughter was driving we ended up with a Toyota Yaris, a rebadged Mazda 2. My wife ended up with a Subaru Crosstrek, and I've been driving a Subaru Impreza for a few years while working out of state. Letting go of the truck would be hard as it is useful and we'd never be able to afford another. The Fords served us well, but we looked elsewhere for replacements.
It's way too easy to only take big corporations to task.
How about the American public?
It seems just about every car on the road is an SUV, minivan, or pickup.
Even those new tiny SUVs or AWD crossovers - are they really the most efficient options? (They're heavier and not exactly the most aerodynamic, no matter if they're made with love, or whatever the slogan is.)
And finally driving habits - people drive faster, harder, and farther than ever before.
Why shouldn't the responsibility also lie with the consumer?
13
Do you mean that people act irresponsibly when they act as they want, instead of as you want?
1
This is why regulations are important. When a company like Ford doesn't have to meet a standard that is hard to meet, they take the easy route.
Zero innovation required to build a V8 pickup truck that can tow 6 tons. It takes innovation to build said pickup *and* get 30+ MPG highway.
This is setting the stage for a 1970s style "Japanese takeover" of the car market. Only today it'll be the Korean manufacturers.
14
Except Ford recently did announce a full size pickup that achieves 30 mpg highway (though it can only tow 5.7 tons).
2
The 2018 F-150 does get 30 mpg highway and tows 5.5 tons.
1
And don’t forget the Chicken Tax, the 25% tariff on foreign made light trucks (ie pick-ups) Lyndon Johnson imposed to protect US manufacturers from the likes of the Volkswagen van. This drops straight to the profit line of domestic manufacturers, promotes inferior quality from lack of competition, and leaves them exposed to higher oil prices when consumers switch to more efficient vehicles like the ones Ford will no longer produce.
2
They are making this decision while gas prices are beginning to rise toward $4 a gallon! Don't they read the news? Or maybe someone else goes to the gas station to fill their vehicles. This decision to only make large cars is just so out of tune and out of step with the way the world is actually working. Yet folks are buying these automobiles, so I suppose they intend to provide what people want. So a total mindset change is what is needed for both consumers and manufacturers.
10
A company's gotta know it's limitations; Ford's leaving the passenger car business because it can't succeed in it. It's a reasonable decision, and anyone who's ever owned a Honda or Toyota or Nissan knows that Ford's exit is no loss to the American car buyer.
9
As a VERY happy owner of 7-yo Fusion Hybrid, I respectfully disagree. Ford makes/made a great car and it's a shame they're walking away from it.
If we were willing to place a carbon tax on gas, there would be more demand for green vehicles. You cant expect Ford to do what the federal government should be doing.
5
My family is brand agnostic and takes the long view. We have one hybrid and one gasoline-powered vehicle. In the next two years we will replace the hybrid with an electric vehicle. In four years we will evaluate the market for an electric crossover or SUV.
If Ford best meets our criteria, fine. If not, our business will go elsewhere.
5
What I find troubling is the apparent throwing in of the tool for "American know-how" and the "can do" spirit that actually did make a America great.
If Henry Ford had simply gone along with the market there would not have been a Model T to bring the automobile to the masses. At least from Ford. The spirit seems to be gone, replaced by the money men. The money men don't make America great, the doers do.
50
Ford made the Model T to be able to run on ethanol or petroleum gas.
He thought biofuel was the future, and American farmers were in.
But Rockefeller, a robber baron of the oil industry who was wealthier and more cunning than farmers and automakers, made sure petrol was the future.
As with the opioid crisis stemming from pill makers flooding the public with supposedly safe painkillers, the global warming crisis (and air pollution and the economic pitfall of oil dependency) has stemmed from the oil industry's greed for market share.
The free market will NEVER serve in the best interests of an American public because our "culture" almost always puts money first, as demonstrated by the so-called humans currently in supreme power of our federal government.
Prrivatization of our school system will likewise be a disaster.
Please vote the Greed Over People Party out in November.
11
It was supposed to be "throwing in the towel", but you know, maybe throwing in the tool isn't such a bad slip when it comes auto manufacturing.
6
I suppose this is what happens when you put a manager in charge whose only experience was selling office furniture. Unfortunately, this is simply a story we have heard before too many times in too many industries. Wall Street approves when a company drops "less profitable" lines for short term increases in profits but when the market shifts (as it will with SUVs) the company lacks the technical and corporate ability to respond and inevitably goes out of business either through bankruptcy or merger. I predict Ford as a separate company will be gone in less than 10 years swallowed up by a foreign manufacturer. Wall Street will be even happier when that happens.
12
I'm on temporary assignment in Michigan, land of "virtually-everyone-owns-an-enormous-truck." It strikes me as strange how anyone can afford these monster-vehicles. In fact, if you do a little research, you'll note that subprime lending and leasing have become very common ways for Americans to "own" their mode of transportation. Also note, that default rates and delinquencies have risen in recent times. I suspect that all the 20 & 30-somethings I see driving their Super-duty pick-ups pulling trailers filled with other gas guzzling toys are living way beyond their means.
In the end, Americans still believe bigger is better and they have little to no regard for the consequences of their run away consumerism.
27
Ford is first and foremost a business. The small, medium and large sedan in North America are largely dominated by the Japanese and the Koreans. And the Americans love their pickup trucks and SUVs. When there's more money to be made by doubling the already great selling trucks with sedan platform based crossovers and medium SUVs there's little wonder Ford decided to pursue that. Those platforms on which SUVs like the Escape and the Edge are based are not going away, they are just making more money for the company used this way. It's not like the Japanese, Koreans and Europeans are not doing the exact same thing for their North American markets. And those platforms are not getting away.
3
I have 2 SUV's as daily drivers and a Mustang GT Convertible that is my fun toy. I have no interest in a typical sedan. Ford is the 1st manufacturer to figure out that millions of us no longer want a sedan from any manufacturer. Brave management and the right call for today's marketplace
4
Don't blame this on Ford. Companies survive and prosper by giving customers what they want, not the other way around.
9
That may be true, but demand is created by ads, and ads are created by car companies. They push us in the direction they want us to go and then say they are responding to demand. Can you remember the last ad you saw from Ford touting fuel efficiency?
11
Yes. Just about every ad for the F150 touts it's superior fuel economy to other full-sized trucks.
1
Surprise! The guiding principle of a corporation is profit not a moral conscience in dealing with global warming. The latter is, or should be (sorry Scott Pruitt), the province of government (aka "we the people"). With E.P.A. joining with the corporate oligarchs it now is up to the states, particularly California, to act for the people and the environment. California has set the standard for the auto market, but is now in a legal confrontation with the E.P.A. about its exemption under the Clean Air Act. I hope that California will take the bold step, already done in a number of European countries, of only allowing the sale of all-electric cars and small trucks by a date certain like 2035. That is the only possible response to Ford and others like them who continue to put air polluting profit over the health and well-being of their customers.
14
RE: "The guiding principle of a corporation is profit not a moral conscience..."
Then you know nothing of Ford's, the company and the man's, history. Certainly profit was a centerpiece but Henry Ford also had a social agenda.
I have little sympathy for the auto makers but the finger of blame should be pointed directly at consumers. If consumers demanded smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, Ford and others would provide them. But the fact is that consumers, even those who feint concern about the environment and global warming, mostly prefer to drive behemoth SUVs and trucks.
19
Companies have to make a profit to stay in business. You make a profit by making what people want to buy, not by making things nobody wants. Notwithstanding lots of governmental coercion consumers find SUVs more practical than tiny sedans.
5
You could still make SUV’s that don’t run on gas. It’s the SUV’s they want, not a vehicles ability to burn fossil fuels under any circumstances.
5
SUVs feel safer one thing that decides if I buy a car is how it sounds if I slam the door. Clunky and heavy yes tinny and thin No. The safety of my passengers and myself matters a lot. If we want to reduce global warming build net zero buildings. Building use 40% of all energy
2
"governmental coercion" needn't be a mandate. It can be done by bribing people with $7000 "rebates" paid for with taxpayer dollars as it's been doing with electric cars. There's also the "Cash For Clunkers" program early in the Obama presidency which caused 700,000 decently working cars to be junked. The result was that prices climbed on used cars which penalized the segment of the market that relied heavily on those used cars, instead they were forced to either own no car if they were unable to get a loan or get a loan with exorbitant interest costs. Leasing was the most costly of the options because the person basically bought a car but never possessed it. Thus it was not feasible to keep it for years of service or to be used as a trade in.
Government interference in the market place costs everyone who is a consumer.
2
Gas prices are low, so fuel efficiency is less important. Once gas prices spike (as they invariably will), many consumers will be in trouble balancing the bigger car payment with filling a 40 gal. tank, just as in the recent past when Hummers roamed the mall parking lots of suburbia and gas hit $4 a gallon.
12
Agreed. The price of gas is volatile and could go up - a lot. If it does you will see a repeat performance of the gas guzzler owners crying that they can’t unload their oversized vehicle for something more economical without taking a financial loss. With loan terms of 6 years or longer, too many will owe more than the vehicle’s depreciated value.
3
Should the taxpayers get reimbursed for their gifts/corporate welfare to the auto industry? Another energy crisis and American car makers will once again be left behind eating their gas guzzlers. An automaker that can come up with a hybrid-gas saver SUV is sure to move way ahead of Ford, et al.
3
There’s lots of comments here despairing Ford’s abandonment of sedans, and subsequently its buyers. Question: If given the choice between doing a job that makes you money, and doing a job that costs you money, which would you chose? I mean, really, industrial automobile manufacturing is not a hobby. Ford’s not doing it to (hopefully) break even. If you really want a sedan built by an American company, solve that conundrum. I’m sure Ford would be glad to hear it.
5
False choice. The real one is would you rather make more money for a few years and then go bankrupt, or make consistent money over generations.
Additionally, you are not considering all the free stuff Ford gets from taxpayers.
Henry Ford, in agreement with other automakers of the time, predicted in 1925:
“The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust – almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There’s enough alcohol in one year’s yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years.”
The Rockefellers had a different idea . . .
16
"But its decade’s worth of investment in developing more fuel-efficient cars is now taking a back seat to profit."
But its decade’s worth of investment in developing more fuel-efficient cars is now taking a back seat to selling what the market wants, and will pay for.
Fixed it.
6
So, if I get the gist of this article, our government is supporting the oil/gas industry with low user taxes that result in more CO2 production, more environmental risk, and riskier driving in top-heavy unstable heavy vehicles. All roads lead to the legislative takeover by industries than should be regulated to benefit US citizens. US citizens must take back our government at the voting booth.
16
Looking forward to the future of all those cars produced by government-controlled car companies, like the great Soviet brands of the 1970's and 80's. Trabant and Zil, anyone?
For those who are all excited about the coming of the all electric car, there is one caveat. In terms of air pollution they are good, but you had best be a fan of mining and ready to deal with other issues surrounding the batteries. There is still no free lunch.
As for Ford, am sure the Koreans ans the Japanese will be more thn glad to fill in the gaps. Who knows - maybe Fiat-Chrysler and Chevrolet might make a move as well.
5
Look at the stats on coal use and coal fired powered plants- reality definitely disagrees with your assessment. You are of course correct that it will result in greater electricity demand. This will be produced largely by fracked gas and, more and more, wind and solar power. As for batteries, they are something we have to deal with. But the fears of early failures have been unfounded- my 11 year Prius is still fine with the original batteries and I know many other folks with the car and have not heard of even a single instance of the requirement for replacement. Yes, when the car is headed to the scrap heap we (society) will have to deal with them, and I suspect it won't be free.
3
There are lots of ways to produce electricity without the use of fossil fuels. And one might argue that the demand and consumption of fossil fueled might be reduced significantly if it’s only use was to generate SOME of our power.
3
Block, you and Dan miss the point. An all-electric world will require much more wiring and storage infrastructure, most of it built from metals mined from the Earth. What's your copper footprint?
Perhaps Ford US lacks faith in their compact car range as they predict the US budget sector in long-term decline. The more likely deciding factor being profitability on Fiesta / Focus range requires production based in Mexico. But Trump proposed trade tariffs on imports undermined that subsidiary. Only gallant Americans refusing to buy heavy-duty "tanks" will be buying smaller vehicles from BMW-MINI or TOYOTA. In any battlefield to surrender your right flank invites trouble down the road? But Ford shareholders must come first? Consumers may have other ideas and wonder if Ford is just making excuses to retreat gracefully due to competition from Japan and Germany as well as Korea. Rarely has such a great company decided its own fate by cutting-out its best part: size matters; until now?
4
I agree with you about these needless, gas-guzzling SUV's. Unless you're a contractor or frequently drive off-road no one needs SUV's. They handle poorly, in profile and from the rear they mostly look alike and they use tons of gas. I have already seen gas for over $3 a gallon. In California it's already in excess of $4 a gallon.
Ford should reconsider. Why would they stop making the Fusion, a really nice car? They sell almost 300,000 of them per year.
19
The announcement by Ford is appalling. Instead of developing new models with improved fuel economy, hybrids and e-cars, they quit selling all but SUV's and trucks. Ford won the 100 year war with GM and Chrysler during the 2008 crash without going into bankruptcy. They developed a new vision and produced the best selling car, the Focus. Now they do this?
With gasoline rising now significantly, the timing of this bizarre announcement is all the more telling. Looks like it's time to get yet another CEO to run the place. Bring back Alan Mulally.
17
It's a totally rational move - Ford builds a great truck with a large profit margin but I always found their cars to be lacking in quality and higher in cost than my Hyundai and Honda. Better to concentrate on the things they do well.
6
Yeah - like building polluting vehicles on the street and putting profits over their responsibility as humans to protect the earth and each other.
Why should Americans bother to do anything to conserve resources or protect the environment?
Whether cars - or not turning off lights or air-conditioning or tossing those daily Starbucks cups or automatic pilot purchase of cheap clothes etc....
We are addicted to shopping and consumption and waste - and sadly see it as our “freedom” and entitlement.
Unbelievable
31
That is why we are the greatest country on the planet. Wealth.
the article is a bit sensationalistic. Ford is building its smaller CUVs on its smaller car platform with the same engine. It is really just a taller car with better port road condition handling. Here in Michigan th road infrastructure is so badly eroded that I watch as cars have to crawl to get thru the pothole ridden roads while I buzz thru in my pickup. The fuel efficiency of the smaller CUVs is quite good.
As for small cars. I previously owned a prius and wouldn’t take a free one. In slippery conditions the engine controls would go into a bizarre super slow tire rotation that almost got me broadsided a couple times. I also was nearly killed when I was rear ended at a relatively low speed but it launched my car into the back of a pontoon boat trailer which pierced the firewall exploded the instrument panel all over the car interior and the beam stopped right along my right arm. Sitting up higher would have kept me safe.
10
"Sitting up higher would have kept me safe." In that one instance, perhaps. But in general, higher centers of gravity result to unsafe handling characteristics and a tendency to roll over. Have you ever seen a race car designed to sit high off the ground? Frequently, the best way to survive an accident is to not have one. Would you want to perform an avoidance maneuver at 70 mph in a truck or a BMW wagon?
Your thinking is flawed. The laws of physics have not been repealed.
2
Anyone who was alive and sentient during the gas shocks of the 70s will remember that that was when Japanese cars began to encroach on the hegemony of American car manufacturers. A lot of that had to do with fuel economy.
What was that saying about not remembering history again?
162
Of course Ford is making a shortsighted decision, but why all the hand-wringing? Those who want American passenger cars can still get them, and if there’s profit in it, you can be sure American-made cars will be produced. The innovation the auto industry needs is much more likely to come from newer companies (i.e. Tesla) anyway.
11
I am old enough to remember when the North American car makers took a huge hit when they continued to manufacture large, poor performing gas guzzlers in the 1970s and the Japanese car makers such as Datsun(Nissan),Toyota and later Honda introduced more fuel efficient, better made and performing vehicles. The North Americans never regained their dominance. I have never owned a North American car company's vehicle since that time. Ford's decision to abandon passenger cars in favour of SUVs and trucks is short-sighted and the company will pay for it in the long run. I drive a Subaru compact SUV as I prefer it's car-like handling but need the "off-road" suspension for driving on roads that are suffering from lack of maintenance or are not paved. I am waiting for the day when one or more of the car manufacturers makes an affordable , moderately sized electric vehicle with all wheel drive and adequate car capacity. Perhaps it might have been a 2020+ Ford Focus Estate AWD electric if Ford was a forward thinker instead of a being motivated by short-term profit.
55
But PROFIT is what shareholders demand, and they have become insatiable.
BTW, My Kia Soul does as well or better on bad roads than my RAM truck and it’s just ordinary front wheel drive.
2
Do you mean shareholders like institutional investors, including public employee pension funds?
is a shame that Americans do not understand or care more about the consequences of their consumer choices. While modern SUV and pickup mileage is so much better than it was, a sedan can top 50 mpg with the right engine.
We have lost a lot of ground under this President, but Ford’s choice comes not from Trump’s bad choices but our own. We seem to think that a 30 mpg four-door pickup is the best we can do, and that oil will be cheap and plentiful forever. Shale wells deplete by 50% or more after the first year, and when the next fuel crisis comes, we wil have no plan B.
24
Also, 'driverless vehicles' are on the horizon. One would think Ford is pivoting toward that, too.
If this foretells the end of the 'car culture', I'm for it.
4
Ford Motor is just planning for the inevitable future of the auto industry, self driving vehicles, which are requiring a tremendous amount of capital to develop.
2
My guess is that Ford has dropped out of the (commodity) passenger car market to make more money on trucks and SUVs all while establishing some sort of manufacturing network that it can convert, redesign, or purchase to which it can turn when the car-buying environment changes. And change it will.
Higher gas prices are coming, higher taxes are coming, a recession is coming, and those less-than-15mpg trucks and SUVs will look awfully indulgent to consumers very soon.
31
Remember the Hummer?
It will be so much roomier to live in an SUV than a sedan when we hit the next recession...
The plans are that all the Ford models will have hybrid and electric options within the next development cycle. They are also investing in urban transportation options that don't involve vehicle ownership. I think there is more to the picture than is presented here.
10
Last year both GM and Ford (and almost every car maker on the planet) announced aggressive plans for electric vehicles beginning as soon as 2019. The next decade looked to be the time of reinvention of the US car industry with about 40 new EV models coming on line. SUVs and trucks have greater payload capacity than cars and can carry bigger batteries in their designs. We’re running out of petroleum. A 2014 report from BP estimates there’s about a 50 year supply left in the ground. The gasoline powered car is a dinosaur. Stay tuned to all this. It looks like another shoe is yet to drop.
6
Two factors here - we do not tax gas properly and American car makers do not make quality cars and have not now for a long, long time. Bill Ford talks the green game but when the already massively wealthy family sees a possible strategy to boost share price and appease Wall Street green goes out the window. Another startling reminder that we may truly be a failing nation. With all our warts if the role of world leader goes to China we are all doomed.
3
Ford does in fact top the quality and longevity charts in many categories, especially trucks and SUVS.
7
"American car makers do not make quality cars and have not now for a long, long time."
This is simply not true. Merely regurgitated diatribe unsupported JD Powers and even Consumer Reports.
I don't understand the patriotic pride combined with the self loathing of Americans.
So wonderful to see my favorite American automotive journalist here in the NYT op-eds.
The several years old one liter Ford engines were true breakthroughs, celebrated by press and gearheads alike, but barely making a dent in American sales. Efficient, very small footprint, and capable of surprising power and acceleration, fans loved it, but Americans wouldn't touch it.
For generations, Ford was considered a sporting brand worldwide, in league with BMW. Here in the states, viewed as the home of boring sedans, overweight SUVs, and quirky hatchbacks that even if loved everywhere else, had no market penetration here.
4
Here in Mexico I have to drive a Ford Escape because so many of the local roads are so bad and I need the clearance.
But sure miss the sporty little Honda Civic hatchback that I had in the States.
4
The Civic hatchback is back as of 2018!
1
My first car was a Toyota Celica in 1979, bought used. I have never bought an American brand car, all Japanese until the last 2 models, they are Korean. I remember my father buying a Toyota back in the early 1970's. It was an ugly little box of a car but it ran great and was really, really cheap.
I love my Kia SUV. Gas Milage is pretty good, but I drive a lot less now too, working part time. My husband has a BMW sedan which starts to bother my back after about an hour in it. The body mechanics of how you sit in an SUV is why I prefer them. After back surgery it is just more comfortable for me. I am active in cycling and yoga and am not over weight. For me a sedan would be torture on my back and right leg due to a herniated disc.
I do believe the future is in electric cars and look forward to Kia or another Asian maker getting an electric SUV which works for me. I need the height comfort, ability to haul stuff, hitch for my bike rack and room for the grandkids that I get in an SUV.
10
My Subaru Forester increased its gas milage as it got bigger. But its higher and larger than 10 year old Foresters.
How?
Its more aerodynamic with smoother shapes. And Subaru rung out inefficient design details, like in its power steering. The vehicle does not need all that extra height; similar Subarus are lower but they dont all get better milage.
We need all wheel drive, especially in Colorado, but it need not waste gas. E cars can use two motors to eliminate the complex mechanical coupling between engine and wheels. Cross over vehicles can be sleek with little more drag than a sedan.
5
I drove Subaru Outbacks for years while living in rural Vermont, despite the low fuel mileage. After I moved to a city and got older, I switched to a Honda Accord Hybrid. True, the sedan format meant that I no longer could carry lumber inside the vehicle, but I had already given up my woodshop in the move. My gas mileage immediately went from 27 mpg in the city to 48. Despite that, the hybrid is waaay peppier than the Outback. Electric motors are much smoother than direct-drive combustion engines and have much more torque for short-term acceleration. The smoothness was initially deceptive. I would think I was driving very sedately, but after accelerating from a light I would notice that all the rest of the cars were half a block behind. I am so sold on electric cars. A hybrid is an intermediate step that offers a lot of the advantages but can still make use of the gasoline fuel infrastructure in the US.
21
It's a matter of automotive vocabulary. The definition of "car" is evolving. The smaller SUVs or CUVs are essentially "tall cars" with the extra headroom, ease of entry/exit and cargo space that "car" buyers prefer. Look at pictures of cars from the '50s, before "longer, lower, wider" became fashionable. What's old is new.
7
The new SUV’s (crossovers) are really just updates of the good old station wagon. The true SUV’s are nothing but behemoth gas wasters/polluters that are status symbols to too many people.
1
I have been driving small Ford sedans for 50 years, mostly recently a 2011 Focus, and have been mostly satisfied. I went looking for a hybrid but the Focus hybrid was a joke and the Fusion too expensive. Instead I bought a Prius and doubled my MPG (50+) over the Focus. I love the Prius and so it looks like I will not be buying any more Fords.
62
Everybody is so worked up about Trump as the cause of all evil. Trump is not a leader, he is a mere reflection of what America truly is. After he is impeached, walks away after one term or crawls away after a second, America will still be America. Nixon, Reagan, Cheney/Bush, Trump with brief interludes of benign ineffective Dems to allow us to delude ourselves that that is not truly who we are collectively and historically. Sure some individual Republicans might lose their seats in Congress because of Trump but he is a godsend for the "right" because they get to push their agenda while everybody focuses on Trump like the villain in the WWE. And sorry, Paul Ryan is not the "right"; republican congressman are just puppets for the right, the exodus of Ryan isn't a sign that the "right" is in disarray. The absence of legislative accomplishments of a republican congress is of no concern to the right. They don't need no stinkin laws; they just need to make money. This news is just one of the many signs the "right" is winning . . . again . . . as always. But sure hope something comes of that Russian red scare thing.
26
All my liberal friends drive trucks or SUVs now. They rationalize that "they get better mileage than they used to...," and they say "I need to sit up high so my visibility isn't blocked by all the other trucks and SUVs." They lament the environment-destroying policies of Scott Pruitt and the Trump administration, while providing the retail rationale for those policies. This seems hypocritical and I confess, I'm disappointed.
90
My 2017 Honda CRV with tons of room and beautifully made - leather, wood, great seats, spacious interior without an overly large exterior, and can carry 4 big geeks like me (6'5" and 220) or 5 if necessary with legroom to spare as well as great handliing gets 35 - 37 MPG on the highway and never less than a cumulative 29 on a day to day basis. I've got 27k on it now with just oil and gas and wiper blades. Why would I begin to look at a Ford for an SUV?
3
I was going to write that, but you already did. Thanks!
3
Fascinating.
All my liberal friends drive hybrid or electric cars. Mostly Priuses.
My mechanic provides a Leaf as a loaner.
But thanks for your anecdote.
8
I bought shares in Ford a few years back because I had thought they had turned a corner with their development and deployment of small, efficient engines (Ecoboost) and electric car efforts, but with this news I cannot in good faith keep them.
31
Uhm, gas prices are going up. Good move, Ford.
72
Only modestly improving the fuel standards of SUVs and other large vehicles actually saves the economy more gas than you'd think. The math makes this obvious when you convert from miles per gallon to another metric, gallons per 100 miles.
Let's say we have two hypothetical cars: 1) an SUV which currently gets 8 mpg, whose engine is incrementally improved to get 10 mpg; 2) a hatchback which currently gets 25 mpg, whose engine is radically improved to get 50 mpg. Here's the math:
1) hypothetical SUV: 8 mpg -> 10 mpg = 12.5 gal/100 miles -> 10 gal/100 miles = savings of 2.5 gal/100 miles
2) hypothetical hatchback: 25 mpg -> 50 mpg = 4 gal/100 miles -> 2 gal/100 miles = savings of 2 gal/100 miles
So, only modestly improving an 8 mpg car to 10 mpg has actually saved us more gasoline than radically doubling a 25 mpg car to 50 mpg. While I'd rather consume 2 gallons per 100 miles than 10 gallons, my point is, even incremental improvements in a gas guzzler make a huge difference on the long run, and are probably more affordable for the average family, anyway.
Also, I mildly resent the notion that consumers are in the wrong for wanting larger vehicles. Ford makes money by giving people what they want, not by giving people what a random magazine editor (or politician or bureaucrat, for that matter) thinks they should want.
5
GM had a family of efficient big SUVs and trucks last generation, couldn't shift them.
BTW, Ford and GM make money giving people what they want; they also tell people what they want. It's called "marketing" and if the profits were there, they'd make them want smaller cars.
11
Where in the article does it state, or even imply that "consumers are in the wrong" for wanting larger vehicles? I don't see any value judgments, or the author telling us what we "should think". I see a neutral report on market dynamics.
And while your math is correct regarding fuel savings, the conclusion you draw is misleading. What rational person would call it more affordable to buy 10 gallons (improved SUV at 10 mpg) because they saved 2.5 gallons, than 2 gallons (improved hatchback) because they'd only save 2?
People may well prefer an SUV despite it's higher fuel costs, but please don't try to argue that an SUV somehow "saves" fuel.
3
Marketing tells people what they should want, and convinces them that are losers if they don't have them.
If people actually thought for themselves, marketing and advertising would not be multi-billion-dollar businesses.
2
Passenger cars have many advantages over SUVs. Being able to turn away from a potential crash very quickly is one. Being able to turn quickly without a high chance of flipping over is another. Statistics show that when a vehicle turns over, the occupants are much more likely to be severely injured or killed, so SUVs, in addition to being a greater threat to smaller vehicles, are also a greater threat to those who ride in them. (People feel more safe in bigger SUVs and one result of that is they drive faster and take more risks. Everything is a trade-off, nothing comes for free.)
I am guessing that this a trial effort by FORD and that they have back-up plans to reenter the car market by making cars overseas, or in Mexico and Canada, if things don't go as planned (bigger profits). Ford has a big assembly plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, and they can't abandon cars elsewhere around the world unless they want to shutdown internationally. If they keep making the Focus in Mexico, for example, they could easily export it back here.
Why are people willing to pay $5,000. or more for something bigger? Well, there's more metal there, isn't there? You pay a lot more for a bigger house, so there is kind of a warped logic to it.
The SUV rose as the highways became more and more crowded and aggressive driving more common, as if everyone wanted to arm themselves for battle. Like escalations before or during a war, there is no end to it. What happens if gas prices go back over five bucks?
102
Your analogy is accurate. The Nash equilibrium is that everyone gets an SUV or a truck for when they are in a collision with their texting-and-driving, SUV-owning neighbor. While the stampede towards SUVs and trucks is a fine example of this well-studied equilibrium concept, it is a lousy place for a society to end up. We are all better off if we all drive sedans (especially the pedestrians and cyclists!), but we have no means of making that happen. We could theoretically ban them, but this is never going to happen. As a consequence of some drivers having SUVs or trucks, eventually most drivers will have them, and quite possibly some day nearly all drivers will have them.
14
Maybe Mexico and Canada, but given that Ford's original plan was to start importing Focuses from China, they may be thinking really cheap for maximum profits.
2
... and who will bail them out of their bad decision? Do the car manufacturers learn nothing from history? Ford is setting themselves up to fail. Time to rid the old portfolio of Ford stock.
50
"Didn't it receive $5.9 billion in low-cost government loans in 2009 to overhaul its factories and bring out more fuel-efficient technology? What would have happened to Ford if Congress hadn't authorized taxpayer money to fund that $25 billion Energy Department program during a moment of crisis for the industry?" (https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2011/09/19/ford-looks-hypocriti...
Another corporation plays cute with the public. The social contract was for Ford to start developing vehicles more aligned with the 21st century, not the pockets of the executives.
91
The solution is to let failed companies go bankrupt, not to give them money so long as they promise to adopt the social values of their government patrons. Toyota, Honda and others make fuel efficient gas and hybrid cars - and profits. No one has to buy a ford car.
4
I suspect that Ford is making two critical mistakes that it, as a profit oriented company, will come to regret. Gas will not remain cheap; in recent decades, its cost has been rather volatile and it is surely just a matter of time before some market disruption will drive gas cost sharply upwards again. Where will Ford be then? Moreover, the smaller, less expensive, less profitable cars it is now eschewing are the very sort of vehicles newcomers to the car market (e.g., young adults just beginning their careers) start out with. If they like their first car, they will generally be predisposed towards its maker as they trade up when their purchasing power and their family size expands. But without offerings such as the Fiesta and Focus, Ford will lose those first-time buyers to Honda Fits, Chevy Sparks, and a welter of other small, affordable cars made by competitors who will reap profits as the buyers of those cars move on to larger, more profitable vehicles. Ford is shooting itself in its foot.
26
Each of my cars has been more fuel-efficient than the last, going to my first car, a now-unimaginable-for-Ford Escort in 1993, and my next one will follow that trend, hopefully a new Honda Insight hybrid if it is affordable enough.
And if I wanted an all-wheel drive vehicle with cargo room, I would consider a VW or Subaru wagon, but never an SUV. I like being down near the road anyway.
38
Living in rural North Dakota pretty much requires AWD, and Subaru has been my all time favorite even though repair service can be a long way away. I don't drive much now, but when I did my dream was to buy a new Subaru and keep on top of preventative service to stave off unexpected repairs. Now I can't afford a Subaru because the used ones hold their value so well. so I've been stuck with a Ford Escape.
1
My 1994 Honda Civic VX got better MPG than any car I have had since. VX is a special model for best MPG. I never got less than 40 MPG in mixed usage. I once got 62 MPG on a trip with a tailwind.
I don’t know why the latest little gas buggies can’t match it.
Look the VX up, it was only beat by Hybrids. Which are not Green btw.
3
I've read that the CRX from about that time was a mileage champion, too.
1
Looking to replace my beloved manual transmission Volvo C30 hatchback after a 9 year love affair I was hard pressed to find a replacement. Volvo only seemed interested in SUVs for the well heeled nuclear family. After considering imports like the Mini or VW Golf GTI neither of which were widely available in a manual, I stumbled upon the Ford Focus ST. It’s only 3 weeks but I love this car! So how ironic is it that after finally producing a domestic model I prefer to any import, Ford announces they’re rejecting buyers like myself who don’t want a car much larger than they ever reasonably need?
180
I understand your love of manual transmissions; I've driven them off and on since my very first car. But please understand that a modern "double-clutch" seven or more speed "automatic" transmission is superior to a conventional five or six speed automatic transmission in every way definitely including both performance and fuel economy.
And if the car is equipped with "Paddle Shifters", you won't be giving up any of your fun, just the need to exhaust your left leg when creeping along in traffic.
I recently had a loaner Audi S4 with just such a transmission and I can easily say this was one of the best cars I've ever driven (and that's considering quite a few Audis, Porsches, and VWs with manual gearboxes).
3
I guess you don't get that much snow in New Hampshire. ;) I wouldn't give up my manual Subaru, even with its all wheel drive, for any sort of automatic - paddle shifters or not. The ability to disengage the drive makes snow and ice driving much more manageable. There aren't many automatics on the rally circuit. Although, as they say on the Interwebs: YMMV.
Uh, you can still get a manual shift VW GTI, although you might have to wait a bit in some cases.
2
Soon we will hear how unions ar killing Ford...no one will mention the disasterous choices management has been making over the years. It’s nuts. Gasoline prices are on the upswing. We need alternative ways of powering our vehicles but instead we are back to gas guzzlers.
127
New science will open surprising prospects for the auto industry.
Ambient heat, a huge untapped reservoir of solar energy, can run engines.
This difficult to believe development was first proven possible by the conversion of a Ford engine by Chris Hunter, in Alaska. After 10 years of work he found that by filling the engine with propane, as a refrigerant, the engine ran without fuel. For details, see NO FUEL PISTON ENGINES at aesopinstitute.org Scroll down to the last pages.
Engines designed to run on ambient heat, rather than fuel, need no propane. The first such engine could not overcome friction, but it proved the science. Now friction can be overcome and future vehicles will need no fuel.
Converting ambient heat to electricity has been done with a solid-state device.This will initially find application in keeping phones charged. It can later power homes 24/7, supplementing or replacing solar panels.
Trolls attack as this breakthrough technology does not conform to aspects of science which have become dogma. Kuhn pointed out science advances funeral by funeral. We no longer have that luxury.
Small solid-state devices running on ambient heat will have an educational function. They will demonstrate, rather than argue, that innovation can change the world faster than regulations.
The work is poorly supported at present. Bold souls can change that and open a path to vehicles of any size and weight that need no fuel. Imagine the implications of this emerging reality!
2
You can't get more than a few pound feet of torque out of a sterling engine. And remember, you've got to cool that propane, that takes quite a bit of energy.
1
I always get a chuckle out of people who claim to violate the laws of thermodynamics with impunity.
3
This sounds like another perpetual-motion machine, a device which cannot exist because it breaks the fundamental laws of thermodynamics. An engine that can transfer thermal energy from one reservoir to another with no net energy input? This is yet another iteration of the same, dubious free-energy devices that have been foisted on the uninformed public by hucksters to separate gullible investors from their money. If this "inventor" did in fact manage to circumvent the laws of physics to get this thing working, get him a Nobel Prize already!
3
What is the definition of "American-made cars" nowadays? My personal Honda CRV was built in Ohio using parts 80 percent of which were also made in the USA. Am I not therefore driving an American car? But the vehicle I use on the job is a Ford Transit Connect with documentation stating it was built in Turkey.
Toyota, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and other foreign manufacturers also build cars here for both the US and overseas markets.
I believe it was a General Motors CEO who years ago famously observed that, "The business of business is business." Auto companies build products for a profit that their markets demand. Otherwise they won't stay in business very long. Regulations concerning safety standards and fuel economy are part of that equation. So are the tariffs imposed if the same product is built overseas and imported. And who can even begin to guess where that is going to lead with current administration?
10
My next car will likely be a Chrysler Pacifica hybrid. Perfect size for my active family of 5. The average gas mileage of the vehicle is 84 miles per gallon. Why precisely should I purchase a small sedan?
To write an entire article about the auto industry, vehicle size and gas mileage without mentioning the fact that all vehicles will soon be powered by electricity is ludicrous. The future is electric. The technology, performance and environmental friendliness of electric vehicles puts the internal combustion engine to shame.
8
According to an article in Forbes, electric vehicles will make up 65-75% of U. S. sales by 2050. This implies that there are about twenty more years of mostly selling gasoline-powered cars, and possibly more. Electrification is not yet on the verge of making gasoline-powered cars obsolete.
Twenty years is plenty of time to justify fighting for a share of a profitable market. The problem is that selling sedans to Americans is just not very profitable.
8
> My next car will likely be a Chrysler Pacifica hybrid.
Before you make this choice, please consider reliability (and I say this as a person that has owned three Chrysler-family products over the years). The gasoline Pacifica models in particular are currently suffering from a dangerous "stalling on the highway" problem that Chrysler has been unwilling or unable to fix.
The hybrid Pacifica might or might not suffer from this particular problem but why take the chance? It's almost a certainty that its reliability over the years will be poor.
1
To answer the question posed in the article’s title, just go out to the nearest parking lot and count the number of SUVs, crossovers and hatchbacks vs. the number of sedans. After performing this exercise ask yourself “how could Ford possibly make a profit producing sedans”? If you can count, you will immediately understand the answer to the question.
3
can't equate behemoth SUVs with smaller hatchbacks.
3
I have been driving for 53 years and have never owned an American car. The US firms have spent millions if not billions opposing radial tires, seat belts, anti-pollution controls, independent suspension, etc., etc. Just look at the market and you see that their path to survival is diminished by their reluctance to understand larger global issues. adios
82
Great for you but I too have been driving for about 52 years and last summer bought my first non American brand car although my new Japanese car was made in America.
I gave up an old Ford Expedition which I used to haul my grand kids around when they were small but kept the old faithful because it was cheaper to keep it than to start over with anew car.
Well, the dealer told me he was going to keep my car for himself because it was still in such good condition; I was in disbelief the old Ford still had appeal.
3
Every American car I've ever been in has seatbelts. My current American vehicle has independent suspension. What is your point?
Ford, you are fools. If you remake your plants to build these behemoths, and Trump is out or under control of a Democratic congress and the regs change again, you can eat this.
And the rest of us won't forget how you jumped to destroy the planet when a little more money could be made. You will destroy your brand for years. Nice way of showing gratitude to the American people for that bailout.
240
I'm with you on everything except for your last sentence. Ford never asked for or received a bailout. They were the lone exception.
10
Ford just doesn't understand that it's stockholders want it to save the planet, not produce profits that support dividends. Such myopia!
1
Ford is the US auto company that didn't get a bailout.
6
I very much wanted my next car to be a small US made electric. Looks like that option is gone. My next car will most likely be made in Japan or South Korea. If Ford, GM and Chrysler don't want my business, I certainly don't want what they are selling. This is highly unfortunate.
All this is happening not because the auto makers can't make a profit selling those vehicles. It's just that they can make a larger profit selling bigger vehicles.
This example shows how globalism benefits the consumer. American companies just don't want to make the products many of us want. OK, fine. We get the message.
262
If you want a small US-made electric vehicle, why not a Chevy Bolt? More range than a base Tesla Model 3, brisk acceleration (0-60 in less than 7 seconds) and affordable?
45
Reply to Bruce Rozenbilt - Bruce! Do your research, man. The only viable long-distance electric car available in the US is the US-made Chevy Bolt (250-275 mile range on one charge). And the longest-distance hybrid electric/gas model available in the US (for those occasional road trips) is the Chevy Volt. GM has the most advanced electric vehicle R&D program in the world. They are everything that Ford isn't. And the Tesla Model 3 (comparable to the Chevy Bolt) should be out soon. If a great electric car is what you want, you'll buy American.
3
And to think that Trump believes it is unfairness on the part of Asians and Europeans that leads to an imbalance in trade in cars! When gas is again at $4 a gallon or approaches $5 (and much more abroad), what will the imbalance look like?
2
Mr. Kitman, I recently bought my first American-made car i--a Tesla Model S. By and far, it's the best vehicle I've ever owned! It's the only American car manufacturer with a real vision and system for sustainability and quality.
46
It's easy to have "vision" when you're charging $75k for a car. Just wait until the mainstream brands catch up with Tesla, which they will. Tesla will be a distant memory.
2
Heard of the Tesla Model 3? The upcoming Tesla Model Y crossover?
Many companies produce high quality sedans for very little profit. Several foreign companies have no choice but to be committed to the sedan market, because their home audiences prefer them and are likely to continue to do so. For this reason, such firms are unlikely to exit the market. Ford read the writing on the wall and bowed out.
The days of making a significant profit on sedans may be gone forever, no matter what happens to gas prices. This "loss" for American car buyers is a consequence of the fact that they can get a great deal on a sedan, which sounds a lot like a win.
The reason for the shift is simply that Americans and Canadians simply are not buying American cars. When I sit in traffic and count cars, between 1 in 10 and 1 in 15 are American cars. Furthermore, there are lots and lots of SUV's and they are getting more popular. Another reason is economics. Why make cars that are disappearing and are not getting more popular, but are getting less popular!
2
Even many "American" cars aren't really American. My Ford Escort wagon was made in Mexico.
There's a fallacy in some readers' assumption that Ford is only responding to customer demand. Like the rest of the US based companies, it creates demand for profit reasons that leave customers less choice. As a former habitual Ford customer (most recently Taurus station wagons) I can say that I didn't leave Ford, Ford left me. Except at the high end, station wagons left the market and given the choice of an SUV or an overseas branded sedan, I chose the latter. Now it’s time to replace a Honda with 125,000 miles on it and my choices of American name brands are even more limited. Can it really be that foreign companies can make more profit on sedans than American ones, or are they just less greedy?
169
I don't think Honda has made a station wagon since the mid-90's. You probably are talking about their line of SUV's.
2
True. Even BMW and Audi seem to be leaving the wagon market. Other than Mercedes of varying high prices, you're left with the Buick Regal if you want a long-roof car. Ironically, it's also the Opel Insignia, still made by Peugeot-Citroen for GM.
1
As a Michigander whose first car was a ford...I’m sad. I prefer small cars and still drive one. I’ve always tried to purchase US made vehicles. But this change will make it harder.
US car makers in the 70s made a similar move making muscle cars raising prices and laughing at the small cars imported by a few. Then the US car market plunged as people looked for gas saving vehicles. I can’t help but see history repeating...I guess it makes sense with another ‘Nixon’ in the whitehouse.
102
I also live in the land of Ford and purchased one when I moved here. I won't be doing so for my next car which I'm aiming to purchase next year. If Ford is going to be so backwards thinking, I'm not supporting that.
4
This is a much better description of the 1960s than 1970s. By the 70's we had Ford Pinto, Chevy Chevette, AMC Gremlin/Pacer, Dodge Dart. (these were not great cars) But through the 70s, the American companies were developing radically different small cars, so that by 1980 we had the Chevy Citation (first front-wheel drive mass produced car), Ford Escort, and by 1981 Chrysler K Car. Yes, the Hondas demonstrated higher quality--but it is wrong to say the big three were pushing muscle in the 1970s (can't you remember Mustang II?)
Sixties and seventies. The horsepower race of the fifties was overcome by the desire for small cars during a recession (Volkswagen inspired the Falcon and Corvair), while the Mustang and GTO inspired a later race of mid-sized and compact cars that was sunk by high insurance rates, a fuel shortage, and stagflation. It usually takes into the next decade to sink these trends. The desire for high-profile vehicles to tackle the flat parking lots of shopping centers will someday come crashing down, but Ford will just bring over its Chinese-made cars. Heck, Buick already imports its Envision CUV from China.
Ford should be recognized for its extensive investments in fuel efficiency and alternative fuels. It's SUVs are far more fuel efficient and sustainable than most European sedans. Who cares if they drop their under-selling cars in favor of small, fuel efficient "SUVs" with higher hip points, better safety, better driver horizons, but equal efficiency? .
7
1. No. Ford should NOT be “recognized” for taking taxpayer money to cover its own r and d costs.
2. No. Ford”s SUV’s are NOT more fuel efficient than “most” European sedans. Perhaps you are thinking of a Mercedes S-class.
3. No. Today’s SUVs are not “small” or “fuel-efficient.” Unless you’re comparing them to previous SUVs which is like saying “Elephants are small! (compared to whales.j”
4. Who cares? Apparently Ford cares. They took our money to build a company that could face the future and instead, used legal loopholes to turn OUR investment in them into products that cost us more and deliver less value.
1
I will be in the market for a new vehicle in about a year. It was going to be a Ford. Not any more.
116
This all goes back to one causal factor: cheap gasoline in the US. Gasoline is cheap in this country because we don't make people pay for the environmental harm of driving. It's not even in the GDP calculation. The federal tax on gasoline ahs not been raised in 25 years and therefore has decreased in real dollars.
The average price of gasoline in the US is $2.54/gallon. In France, for example, it's $7/gallon. The rest of the world taxes auto fuel to extract a price for the harm driving does to our shared environment.
So Americans, who largely respond to financial incentives rather than what scientists tell them is an imperative, want trucks, in many cases for frivolous reasons (compare utility times fuel-efficiency times handling of a good station wagon to an SUV and you understand what I'm talking about; but you can't sell wagons to Americans because they don't ride high, which is nuts; high center of gravity = unsafe handling; would you want to perform an avoidance maneuver at 70 mph in a Lincoln Navigator or a BMW wagon?).
We need higher fuel taxes in this country, but it won't happen, because it's political suicide. And we have a president who doesn't think climate change is a problem, since he knows more science, with zero training, than the worldwide consensus of climate scientists.
299
In Germany, home to the highest fuel prices in Europe, 19% of the price is VAT. It goes straight to the federal treasury's general fund. Sixty-five eurocents of the price is the German federal excise tax on fuel. Twenty eurocents goes to general fund, thirty-five (passed as an environmental tax) goes to the national pension fund, and the remaining thirty eurocents is dedicated to transportation. None of the non-pension fund revenue is shared with the German states or localities. (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-german-fuel-taxes-have-... )
At least our 19.4 cents per gallon is used for its intended purpose.
6
Fifteen eurocents goes to the pension fund. Not thirty-five. Got tangled in the numbers. Apologies.
Grandpa: hopefully the Democrats will run on this in November and 2020 -- raising gasoline prices to $7 a gallon because "that's what it is in EUROPE".
Please, do this. Please.
TRUMP 2020!
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Are members of the Trump family on Ford's Board of Directors? The Koch Brothers? Maybe Scott Pruitt? It's true that it makes current economic sense to go after the SUV, crossover and truck market, as those offer the best profit margins and, for now, seem to be what consumers want. But this is short term thinking, and I daresay that the eventual winners in the automotive industry will be those who adopt long term thinking, which involves producing vehicles that won't be using fuels that produce carbon emissions.
In a sense, it comes down to this: making the vehicles consumers may need now, or setting yourself up to make the vehicles the world needs later.
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Kitman implies that Ford knows their days are numbered, and they are going to make as much money as they before it's over.
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I see a parallel between Detroit and Hollywood: rapidly pumping out bloated, thoughtless, repetitive product to maximize profit before they’re wiped out in the imminent paradigm shift.
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If Ford's days are numbered, it is their own doing.
I find it hard to fault them for responding to consumer demand -- if consumers wanted to buy the sedans Ford produces I'm sure Ford would continue to make them.
Ford and the other U.S. manufacturers generally abandoned larger, higher end sedans to their European and Asian competitors a few years ago. I wonder whether that was the strategic mistake that will result in an SUV only Ford.
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U.S. manufacturers have never been able to compete with higher end sedans manufactured by Europeans, e.g. BMW, Audi, Mercedes. They have had no choice but to chase the middling and lower end of the market.
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Exactly. And that middling and lower end sedan market is just not a good place to be.
"I find it hard to fault them for responding to consumer demand..."
This is the crux of the issue that critics have been blind to for, in my view, something like thirty years.
If you take a broad view of the characteristics of the cars that Americans *actually* buy when they are available, and when fuel prices are within the "normal" range for the US (about $1.50 to $2.50 a gallon in today's dollars, over the past 100 years), you will see that Americans have always prefered to buy cars of a certain size. When US automakers stopped making huge cars in the late seventies, in response to the gas crisis and new fuel economy standards, Americans started buying trucks instead of cars.
US automakers never went back to making really big sedans and station wagons (I believe, again, because of the way fuel economy rules were written), but instead made their trucks more and more like cars. If an American company did go back to making a huge sedan with a 130" wheelbase, like the old Cadillacs and Lincolns, Americans would gobble them up.
Ford is simply seeing this reality and acting on it by returning to a model line closer to what they had years go, when they were more successful. So long as gas prices hold, they will profit from it.
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A friend used to be an engineer for Honda, Japan. Recently he had a sales catalogue and was seriously considering a Mini Cooper.
I mentioned to him my 2005 Ford Focus wagon (with all the bells and whistles of its generation)...but, no. No Ford for him. There must be a lesson in this somewhere.
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If he was seriously considering a Copper (made after 2005) he's not much of an engineer.
In a side note, Mr. Kitman and I each purchased nearly identical MINI Cooper S vehicles from the same dealer, delivered at roughly the same time, two license plate numbers apart back in 2002. That's when they made driver's cars, not garbage.
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I grew up in Detroit. I will only buy Ford's or brands from their portfolio. Why? Value? Reliability? Resale? Nope. I buy them because I know the name of the family who owns the company (still) and where they live. A rare thing in this day and age...
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This seems to be a silly reason for buying a car. I'm sure the Ford family would give you the same consideration....
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I know the name of the current so-called president and where he lives, but I wouldn't buy a condo, a round of golf, a university diploma, a steak, or a tie from him; and certainly not a car, used or otherwise.
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Jamie, you miss the elephant in the room. Gas cars are toast for commuting. There will be 3 classes of cars: ZEV commuter cars, SUVs, and trucks. The ZEV is for going to work. The SUV is for trips. The truck is for loads. Families will own at least 2 of the 3. You will find that Ford will compete with the Bolt in the ZEV category.
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Sounds like a depressing, soulless future PB.
I will be holding on to my convertible roadster then. Mostly for trips. Kind of afraid of the commuter lots.
That's where the daily driver sedan goes.
The author is perhaps a bit harsh, vilifying a company that responds to consumer demand. Ford bet the house on the aluminum F150 and V6 engines in full size p/u trucks. Both were verboten among full size truck faithful. Those investments in engine technology have paid off- they (like everyone else) have downsized their engines. And they're soon to release a diesel F-150 that gets 30MPG on the highway. Would it be better if they produced more cars? Yup. But are they providing vehicles people want and which are much more efficient than they used to be? Affirmative.
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In fact, Ford made a smart decision. Low profit margin small cars will be manufactured in China. High profit margin trucks and SUVs stay. Of course Ford is not given up on cars. It is just that making small cars in this country makes no economic sense. It actually says a lot about making things in this country. Manufacturers are reluctant to invest because of the labor environment in this country. It is so hard to find good workers. I miss the good old days, when people honestly worked hard in the field. To make America great again, we must bring back the decency and work ethics of the Judeo-Christian values.
5
I'm still holding out on vague hope that this is satire
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The "high profit margin" you refer to is the result of protectionism, not superior craftsmanship. Thank none other than Lyndon Johnson and 40+ years of other politicians for a 25% tariff on foreign light-duty trucks that remains to this day.
And the good old days you refer to were when someone with a high school diploma could make enough of a living to support a family - on a single income. So yes, bring those days back!
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You mean the old days when American workers drank and smoked openly on the job and American cars were riddled with manufacturing defects and poor longevity? Yeah, I'll pass on those particular old American Judeo-Christian values and work ethic and the good-ol' days, thanks. American workers are far more productive and accurate now than ever before.
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