Ford is doubling down on electric vehicles as noted by an announcement of an All-Electric ‘Mach 1’ SUV coming in 2020.
In an announcement at the North American International Auto Show on Detroit, Ford said the performance SUV will be developed by the company’s Team Edison at an electric- and autonomous-vehicle plant being built in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood, but revealed few other details.
The Mach 1 name has been used previously with Ford Mustangs. A short video that accompanied the announcement took a “Frankenstein” tone as it showed a Mustang and a Ford Explorer entering a factory building, then a series of lightning bolts flash and the front doors open to reveal….something fast.
$11 Billion Investment
Reuters reports Ford plans $11 billion investment, 40 electric vehicles by 2022.
Ford Motor Co will significantly increase its planned investments in electric vehicles to $11 billion by 2022 and have 40 hybrid and fully electric vehicles in its model lineup, Chairman Bill Ford said on Sunday at the Detroit auto show.
The investment figure is sharply higher than a previously announced target of $4.5 billion by 2020, Ford executives said, and includes the costs of developing dedicated electric vehicle architectures. Ford’s engineering, research and development expenses for 2016, the last full year available, were $7.3 billion, up from $6.7 billion in 2015.
Ford Chief Executive Jim Hackett told investors last October the automaker would slash $14 billion in costs over the next five years and shift capital investment away from sedans and internal combustion engines to develop more trucks and electric and hybrid cars.
Of the 40 electrified vehicles Ford plans for its global lineup by 2022, 16 will be fully electric and the rest will be plug-in hybrids, executives said.
“We’re all in on this and we’re taking our mainstream vehicles, our most iconic vehicles, and we’re electrifying them,” Ford told reporters. “If we want to be successful with electrification, we have to do it with vehicles that are already popular.”
Public Ready?
https://twitter.com/Ford/status/952669356177096704
Will this idea be accepted? One respondent thinks not.
Nothing can beat the Mustang Mach 1. Sorry, but I don’t think this will be accepted by the American performance group. It’s electric
— Austin Ripp (@RippsRacing) January 14, 2018
All Hype, No Details
So far all we have is hype without details.
However, I strongly believe electric is the wave of the future, especially for most city drivers.
The auto industry is undergoing its first major change, ever, as I see it. And the revolution is on two fronts.
-Self-driving vehicles
-Electric vehicles
The doubters will be proven wrong, quickly, in both areas.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
BTW, a current EV (Tesla model 3) gets to over 300 miles, and refuels >half-full in 30 minutes, so already your claim is old. Roll on 2-4 years down the road with the fast improvements in batteries, it’ll be a no-brainer for many segments of consumers to choose electric cars for their personal and economic advantages (regardless of environmental issues or any subsidies).
“Even batteries that last 350 miles and take 5 minutes to recharge offer nothing consumers do not already have with their internal combustion vehicles.”
@poduk I was replying to this quote from commenter wootendw:
@stillCJ Burning hydrogen produces water vapor. So all you’re doing is replacing one greenhouse gas, CO2, with another, H2O.
@Trader_O Charging may be cheaper than fuel now, but more electric cars will put more pressure on the grid which will raise the cost of electricity. And solar panels are a panacea. They cost tens of thousands to install and even then they likely won’t produce more than 50% of a homes electrical use.
Trader_O, of course, there is one downside to BEVs you fail to mention; they lack range and take hours to “refuel”. Aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?
I side with Mish. Electric has several advantages for consumers vs. internal combustion cars: much stronger acceleration, lower-cost “refueling” (and braking energy used to recharge, and no fuel wasted while idling), much lower engine maintenance costs, almost noiseless to operate, no fumes in your garage.
And if you put a solar array on your roof, you can refuel most of your driving for free. All this was not possible before battery costs came down hard.
This will be a revolution.
Customers aren’t asking for electric cars, they’re more expensive and less practical. The EPA will require cars to average 54.5 mpg in 2025, that’s one product cycle away. Currently, only the Prius Prime, a plugin hybrid, comes close, but still doesn’t meet that number.
The only way to sell cars that customers want is to sell a lot of electric cars to increase the average of your CAFE requirements, so hopefully they will come up with nice to drive electric cars.
The power grid can’t take car charging either…this is all delusional at the moment.
Unlike self-driving cars, which are already here and will likely dominate the roads within 15 years, electric cars, other than hybrids, offer nothing that will improve people’s transportation experience. Even batteries that last 350 miles and take 5 minutes to recharge offer nothing consumers do not already have with their internal combustion vehicles. Not even low prices. I just can’t see people rushing to buy something that offers them little, if anything.
Batteries create their own huge hazardous environmental problems with their production and disposal. Electric cars are not solving a problem, merely shifting it.
Personally I would prefer zero pollution hydrogen fueled vehicles rather than electric, but hydrogen seems to be pretty much ignored. What I am wondering is: since roads are mostly paid for with taxes on gas and diesel fuel, how are they going to pay for road construction & maintenance if sales of those fuels drop drastically?
Obama promises Hope and Change. Trump to Make America Great Again. And the Post War hype shops to have flying cars, cheesy rubber suits, childish mumbo jumbo language and HAL ready in time for 2000…… While all any of them ever deliver(ed), was more debt, more theft and more harassment.
Largely on the back of demand for powering ever shrinking ICs, batteries have improved at a faster rate than more mature ICEs over the past few decades. Opening niches for batteries and electric motors for a growing number of vehicle use cases. That trend will likely continue for a while, despite battery tech now also starting to reach some level of maturity. The entire superstructure currently built on top of that, is just more mindless hype, by the usual mindless suspects.
stillCJ: “And then, there is this…” But then, there is also this: “According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a box truck ran a red light about 10 a.m. at the 16th and Progress streets in Pittsburgh’s North Side and smashed into an Argo AI self-driving car with four people inside. Two of the four passengers in the Argo AI car were injured and taken to the hospital in stable conditions.” The Argo had the right of way.
It seems to me that if Ford wants to spend $11 billion on electric cars, it is entirely possible that they looked at the overall infrastructure problem. As for self-driving cars, maybe they are just around the corner, but one thing for sure, 99.999% of all driving is drudgery.
Did a short cost analysis. Solar has come way down. Amortized cost at $1/ watt, 4.5 peak equivalent hours of sun and 20 year lifetime at 4.22% interest (My power company’s present bond yield) gives 5.6cents/kWh for capital equipment only. Does not include maintenance, etc. It is getting closer.
Sechel,
People are delusional to think that we can switch (or should I say BE switched) to electric vehicles and also phase out carbon-dioxide generating power plants. It is an environmentalist/academic la la land where that happens. So driving an electric vehicle makes greenies think that they are reducing pollution, as long as the coal or gas-fired power plant is out-of-site in another state or county. Who needs buses or other public transport when you can cruise around in a 4000 lb electric luxury SUV?
Am I bitter as we watch these a-holes flit around the world in private jets and bitch about our carbon foot prints. Yes I am. If they actually believed their own crap, they would fly coach or take the train.
Electric is coming. Timeline will be interesting.
Sechel, Coal is losing out to gas. There is no comparison at coal 2cents per kWh to solar, 28cents per kWh. Oil shale drilling has produce a surplus of gas, and the electric power industry is taking advantage. Solar and wind only survive on tax money taken from us at gunpoint. Siemens is working on a wind project in the North Sea that will actually produce electricity at market rates. Good for them. As for the rest of it, I’m sick of being ripped off while oblate spheroids like Al Gore and his cronies get rich at public expense.
I think it’s great. Do away with steering wheels and get people away from driving and causing some many accidents. We will all be better off. The shift will be fun to watch and portfolio is well placed to ride this macro trend.
I can see hybrids dominating in 5 years, but I’m not sure about electric. We don’t have the infrastructure to support it and I doubt we will in 5 years either. We’ll need more power plants and they require a lot of lead time.
The two technologies go hand in hand, when you consider that most self-drivers will be delivery vehicles. Sending a big boring box on wheels to deliver packages to suburban homes, only without the 200+ pounds and 3-4 cu meters of space for a driver. I could even see a combination of Swanns’ and a vending machine that would show up on your doorstep and you can just pull what you want.
The first generation of them will be convenience driven, much like Amazon is convenient for people living in the sticks. Instead of slubbing your way to the store and dealing with all that, let George do it instead. Oh people will protest about not being able to pick fruit or whatever -but here’s a hint: You’re no good at picking out fruit. And besides anyone who’s ever worked in a grocery store will tell you that the produce manager is the key to the store’s P&L statement. The one where I worked way back in the day the produce manager would change prices daily, sometimes more, and was always shuffling the produce around to get it out the door before it went south.
But of course none of this will take place in the United States. I see this only possible in countries and societies where private property rights are enforced and understood. Here in the law-and-order USA the trucks will be looted by drug addicts and tagged by gangs -possibly of laid off Teamsters.
AirBnb – but for car :D, personal robotic slave. Take to work in morning, after that go sub-con to Uber/Lyft/etc.,.. earn money, drop by the car wash for clean up, then come fetch me home.
i will buy an EV for my wife as soon as the price gets around $25k. Simple business case: I won’t get a call at the office asking if she should ok the $80 fuel injector cleaning solution when she drops off the car for a simple oil change.
It does not matter what the case is today. What matters is the case in 2020 or 2021
Self-driving vehicles coming; Electric vehicles – bad idea unless hybrid. Will flop in the market.
Just checked Drudge and this Yahoo article appeared about GM going electric and eliminate the steering wheel 284 comments to the article, didn’t read them all, but haven’t read any that are happy about it. here’s one: But who BUYS them? What, we are to be good soldiers and BUY 17 million of these after losing driving privileges? Forget it. GM, YOU buy them. Notice, the consumers are NOT EVEN being asked! Here;s another: Gm stop smoking crack and designing cars. The ntsb waived conditions? wow aka government motors has friends in high government places. And Another: Self driving cars means the government can literally control where people drive and when they drive and a better system of tracking the people. Great huh… something the people don’t want and they’re shoving down our throats. So much for marketing departments. link to yahoo.com
link to zdnet.com
And then, there is this
Assuming GM, Chrysler, etc. follow suit….what does that mean for the refined products like gasoline and crude in general?
AS of today there is no business case to buy an EV unless of course you are a libtard wanting to go green. Can someone please do the math first. I have looked at Ford hybrids and even though there is no cost differential you have to replace the battery which wipes out any fuel savings. The only option would be to lease if you drive very few miles .