Big change coming for Blue Oval
I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.. . . .
That pretty much sums up the last half of a Ford event in Dearborn, Mich., recently. They took the wraps off a number of coming products with the proviso we can’t talk about anything.
But leading up to that, we heard about 45 minutes of presentation on the future of Ford, all on the record and all pointing to a period of significant change for the Blue Oval. In that on-the-record talk, executives touched on most of the products they showed us later.
Not the least of that change will be redesigns of the Escape and Explorer and the launch of two SUVS — one of which you know as the new Bronco — designed to actually go off road.
“For Jeep, it’s about rock-crawling in Moab (Utah). But our premise is completely different,” Jim Farley, Ford’s president, global markets, said. “We want to give people true off-road vehicles that are comfortable at higher speeds, on two-track trails, and do well in deep sand on the beach.”
This is a departure from the Escape and Explorer, both of which can be had with some good mechanics for off-roading, but which are presented more as soccer parent crossovers than trail-busting, off-road monsters.
Farley said the Raptor — an F-150 on an off-road steroid program — helped inform Ford’s choices. The popularity of Raptor, which Farley referred to as the Porsche 911 of off-roading, proved the existence of a market for off-roading.
“What started out as a small program on a shoestring budget, Raptor has turned into an offroad franchise and has a loyal following of enthusiasts,” he said. “Last year, F-150 Raptor in the U.S. outsold the entire Porsche car lineup.”
The Bronco is coming in 2019, the second, apparently smaller, apparently Bronco-esque, SUV will come after that.
It’s all part of Ford’s plan to churn its inventory more frequently, replacing existing models and introducing new models more quickly. Joe Hinrichs, president, global operations, said by 2020, Ford plans to cut the average age of designs in showrooms to 3.3 years from today’s 5.7.
Ford will also start expanding its offering of hybrid and electric vehicles, with the goal of offering hybrid versions of every one of its mainstream crossover vehicles and some passenger cars.
Farley said offering hybrids in as many models as possible helps bring down economies of scale, which now render many hybrid vehicles unfeasible, at least from the standpoint of paying for price differences with fuel savings.
“The first thing is, you have to offer it on your mainstream products,” he said. “Every one of them.”
So each new utility will have the option of being a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, or either, he said.
“We’ve moved past hybrids being a science project.”
Hinrichs said Ford is speeding up the product development process by reducing the number of “architectures” — the underlying structural basis of vehicles — to five: rear-drive unibody, frontdrive unibody, commercial van unibody, body-on-frame and battery electric.
These, along with powertrain, chassis and body “modules,” will form 70 per cent of each new vehicle. Design cues, hoods, doors and interiors will form the remaining 30 per cent and provide for unique designs from model to model.
Truck buyers will get a benefit in a hybrid F-150 due out in 2020 that will have an on-board generator, eliminating the need to carry a gas- or diesel-powered generator for work use.
Hinrichs said the decision to offer the generator is an example of how Ford plans to use what’s known in the analytics world as “big data,” or vast streams of customer feedback, to inform product decisions going forward.
“Seeing how our truck customers use bungees to tie down expensive generators . . . gave us the idea for adding the built-in generator that will offer real value to our all-new F-150 hybrid,” he said.
Plus, look for Ford to be a part of the next generation of urban design, where a variety of transportation modes and connected infrastructure aim to reduce congestion, increase livability and provide for free mobility, all while making movement safer, said Ford president and CEO Jim Hackett.
“Our team is not waiting around to see what happens,” Hackett said. “Ford has been aggressively working to help shape the future of mobility.”