New Ford CEO a self-driving leader
DEARBORN, Mich. — In a shake-up reflecting the pressures on the U.S. auto industry, Ford Motor Co. replaced CEO Mark Fields on Monday and vowed to catch up in the race to build selfdriving cars and define a new era in personal mobility.
The company said Jim Hackett, who had overseen the Ford subsidiary that works on autonomous vehicles, will take over immediately for Fields.
During Fields’ threeyear tenure — when Ford’s shares dropped 40 percent — he came under fire from investors and his board for failing to expand the company’s core auto business and for lagging in developing the high-tech cars of the future.
The board’s decision to change management was made Friday, eight days after Fields had been sharply criticized for deteriorating financial results during the annual shareholders meeting.
William Ford Jr., the company’s chairman, said in an interview that he subsequently met with Fields and that they had “decided mutually” that Fields would retire after 28 years with the company.
That cleared the way to offer the top job to Hackett, 62, a longtime chief of Steelcase and a former Ford director, who joined the company’s operational ranks last year as head of “smart mobility,” which includes driverless technology.
Ford operates a Research and Innovation Center in Palo Alto, has a state permit to test autonomous cars on California roads, and last year purchased San Francisco shuttle service Chariot for $65 million.
“Extraordinary times require transformational leadership, and that’s what Jim has been his entire career,” said Ford, great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford.
Hackett said the board has given him a free hand to transform the nation’s No. 2 automaker, including seeking alliances with Silicon Valley firms, changing its product lineup, and divesting itself of unprofitable global operations.
“I’ve got all the opportunity to make the decisions we need and a great team to help me get there,” Hackett said in an interview.
Fields, 56, could not be reached for comment. As recently as last week, he had been trying to strengthen Ford’s bottom line by cutting 1,400 salaried jobs. But, unable to reverse the stock decline, he ran out of time to carry out his strategy to cut costs and expand Ford’s lineup of trucks and sport utility vehicles, while also investing in autonomous and electrified vehicles.
Despite spending heavily on self-driving research, Ford was struggling to keep pace with larger automakers such as General Motors and tech giants like Google, both of which have been testing self-driving vehicles. Ford is promising to have a fully autonomous vehicle on the road by 2021.
Palo Alto’s Tesla — which recently surpassed GM and Ford in market capitalization — is trying to expand to the mass market by bringing out a less expensive electric car this year.
At the annual meeting on May 11, Fields said Ford was capable of staying competitive in the current market while also “keeping one foot in the future” of an industry heading toward autonomous, battery-powered cars.
Yet Ford is showing troubling signs of decline. Profit in the first quarter dropped more than 30 percent from a year earlier, and the company’s market share in the United States fell slightly.
And with auto sales in the United States cooling off after two record years, Ford faces a tough balancing act if it is to maintain strong results in North America while investing in projects for the future.
Fields was also at the forefront of an abortive plan to build a $1.6 billion assembly plant in Mexico for small cars. The project was abandoned early this year as sales stalled and President Trump’s election brought pressure on Ford to make more vehicles in the United States.
While praising Fields’ contribution to the company, Ford said the automaker needed to move faster on new initiatives and to better explain its long-term strategy.
“We have to re-energize our business, including sharpening some of our execution,” Ford said. “Some of the areas of our business haven’t been running as smoothly as they should.”