Ford has been too busy selling $80,000 trucks to worry about cars and EVs.
I’ve never understood why so many people in the US buy pickups. City dwellers? Why? People in most trades? Panel van > pickup. Farmers or ranchers? Makes sense.
Status symbol and to project a personality.
Status symbol: “I’m a fucking moron :D”
Now with Truck Nuts^Tm
It’s also ego and insecurity about their masculinity
My employer just swapped me from a pickup with a covered rollout bed to a van. I absolutely love it! Slightly less comfortable ride, but carries more parts and it’s all more accessible, especially if it’s raining or snowing. So this is why many companies have been using vans for so long…
Utility, can carry tall stuff, and can carry messy stuff without worrying about dirtying up the inside of a vehicle. Rain will wash a pickup bed out. At least that’s why I have one, hauling stuff, working around my property, hauling trash. But mine is a 1995.
I/my business have owned 4 panel vans. One was an IVECO that had a 5+m long by 2+m tall interior. I’d much rather haul a tall load enclosed. If I ever needed to haul something taller, I could always rent a pickup or a real truck, and not being saddled by the pickup’s shortcomings everyday.
Pickups have their uses, and I never denied that, I just say that most pickups don’t do pickup duty, and that a lot do panel van duty.
To absolute morons who make sure it comes with a bed cover they never take off.
An assessment of the global electric vehicle market and Ford merited one lukewarm, brief sentence. At the time, Farley was the Executive Vice President and President of Global Markets. If that sounds like a job that would require paying close attention to China’s reality and increasing competitiveness, it is. If that sounds like a job that should understand disruptive innovation’s death knell for firms like Ford, it is. If that sounds like a job that should have been creating strategy to deal with the reality of China’s emerging electric vehicle juggernaut, it is.
Auto industry mismanagement is redundant.
Oh my that damage control speech from Ford the article was forced to include does not work in the direction they hope it does.
There is actual fear to be perceived as Incompetent in there.
The reporters did very little to sugarcoat that they got told to edit it. Basically a copyPaste of fords demands of what needed to be talked about
It was a quote from them…
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What’s this thing where when you need to italicize something that is already italicized, you change it to a sans-serif font? Looks bad
Oh so that is why my eyes burn, i thought it was purely the content.
They still build the only real EV truck though
I get the criticism of the cyber truck, and the hummer EV is ridiculous, but why do the R1T and Silverado EV not count as trucks? R1T is an expensive but great midsize go anywhere truck. Silverado EV is a range king and a little flat looking, but still 100% “truck”. Lightning is just the all around best value of a truck. I say this as a lightning owner, there are options in this market.
Only one of the three is body on frame and it’s Ford’s
They almost made a truck with the Silverado EV but then they had to turn it into whatever the Avalanche is supposed to be with fins coming off the cab that get in the way of things. Anyways, not to sound bitter but some people like to be able to put camper shells, tool boxes, or other accoutrement on the back.
R1T is decent, just really expensive.
And unibody
Rivian?
Unibody
They were suggesting that Rivian was forgotten.
They were suggesting that Rivian also make a real EV truck which they don’t
What makes them not real? They’re shaped like a truck and they operare purely on batteries, what more could there be? I get the feeling that this is truck-snobbery like the ford vs chevy guys from 20-30 years ago
It is truck snobbery. It’s a truck, the definition of a truck is a large motor vehicle used to transport goods, materials, or troops. His response is straight up gate keeping, like the people who will tell you a mustang mach-e isn’t a real mustang since it’s not shitting a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Body on frame, only on the F150, that’s not snobbery, that’s just reality, work trucks need that.
So you are leaving out the adjective “work” on purpose when you say “not a truck” because…?
Why are you being deceptive? What do you gain from that?
And plus, look at the bed. Its so short because of the cab. What kind of lumber are you even hauling in that?
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Trucks are for every tradesperson that does the things you lack the time, training or tools to do when something breaks at your residence. Trucks help you move.
there are way more trucks than tradespeople.
And that doesn’t invalidate my statement.
Squares and rectangles
I always wonder about that:
- I knew a guy with a truck to commute alone into Boston for a desk job. Does home improvement projects but most of the time it’s an excessive vehicle
- Family up the street - a couple of the grown kids live at home and all have trucks. On the one hand it’s a family of Trades, but on the other hand the trucks are spotless, customized, and I never see tools.
Trucks don’t do that, vans do.
In Europe every tradesperson drives a van because it is a lot more efficient and can haul way more than trucks ever can.
Well then I guess I need a new vehicle because I’m a handyman and I use a truck. Dealing with a van full of stuff and trying to slide drywall in is kind of difficult. However, I can easily snap them on top of the bed of my truck and get moving. And it cost me a whole lot less to maintain this truck than it would to maintain a van. You ever tried carrying a ton of gravel in a van? I wouldn’t. Takes much longer to load and unload that way.
Well then I guess I need a new vehicle because I’m a handyman and I use a truck.
Yes, yes you do.
They carry very different loads, and both are awesome.
And if said tradesperson doesn’t want their equipment to get wet in the rain they get a van instead.
Or they just get some storage bins. I find them to be highly effective. Allows me to load just the tools I need for a job so unloading and loading is very fast.
Think of a van as an enormous truck storage bin.
But it’s got a roof which makes placing 20 foot ladders or a ton of gravel in it very awkward. The fixed volume natural of it isn’t compatible with the kind of work I do. But maybe you, a person that doesn’t do my job, knows more about my situation than I do.
I did always wonder about the ladder thing. I see ladders on vans all the time, but it also seems inconvenient. Even as a taller guy, it looks like a reach. How do y’all do it, especially if you are on site alone? Are there racks with some sort of lifting mechanism?
Edit: nvm, someone already posted a picture of such a rack
But maybe you, a person that doesn’t do my job, knows more about my situation than I do.
The original point above was that vans are better than trucks if you frequently get rained upon. Maybe it’s you who is lacking empathy.
Oh, and this.
Get a fucking dump truck or something to deliver gravel, putting gravel in the bed of a pickup is probably the stupidest excuse to own one I have ever heard. Loading it would be a batch unloading it would be even worse, and you typically need a fuck lot more gravel than what a pickup can carry.
Vans, you’re thinking of vans. Becuase you can lock up all your expensive tools in a van, it keeps rain off your supplies, it gives you a mobile workspace with AC, and you can take out the seats or reconfigure it for the job at hand. All the tradesmen I know drive vans. All the idiots I know who want an expensive mall crawling pavement princess so they look like they could do actual work, buy trucks.
I’m glad you know enough people to make uninformed opinions about my professional needs. Are you going to recommend, like another poster here, that I buy a second dedicated vehicle that costs more than I make in a year for the occasions where I need to transport stuff that you can’t load in a van? AC? You think I could afford to run the AC?
By the way is my 2005 Ranger with 200k+ miles that is worth less than $4k a pavement princess? Am I an idiot for owning one general purpose vehicle that covers all my personal and professional needs?
No, but I wouldn’t call delivering gravel high skill labor that I couldn’t do.
Sure there are legitimate needs for trucks. The vast majority of truck owners buy them to look cool, instead of actually doing truck things with them. Be proud that you may be the exception to the rule.
“No, but wouldn’t call delivering gravel high skill labor that couldn’t do.”
I do work that others can’t because they lack the time, tools or experience to do themselves. Gravel isn’t high skill. Prepping an area for gravel takes a little more skill. But being able to shovel a ton of it in 100°f temperatures is beyond the ability of most people.
You’ve never set foot outside of a city or had any contact with the people who produce your food, have you?
It was crazy visiting China last year. The EVs that everyday people are driving feel so polished and futuristic in many ways.
I did also and was astounded. More EV brands and retail stores for them than for mobile phones and gadgets in the malls. I counted 14 brands in one mall. Like EVs are a fashion accessory. And I saw car designs for sale and on the steet that looked like what we usually see only as early concept art. not high tier of market either. It is an ultra-competitive race to the bottom , There must be several new factories and brands opening every week, and maybe the same or more shutting down. some of the bells and whistles being thrown in are pretty funny. Little robotic characters ala alexa for your car that sits on the dash with led face responding and moving to commands. half side doors being an LED screen for some reason (mainly to atrract potential buyers in the malls I thought) . The european, tesla and other US evs alongside were very very plain. Whether all of this is a good thing is another matter.
Honestly our sad EV offerings deserve to be disrupted
- The arrogance of seeing only established manufacturers.
- The self-centeredness of assuming US and European are the only markets that matter, and product mix in US is more profitable.
- The instant gratification of not thinking beyond quarterly financials.
- The lack of knowledge of his own business and how to fit engineering timelines into marketing timelines
Lol, the corrections… “We didn’t sleep, we sold 5 cars!”
They are still sleeping. The petrol corruption runs so deep, it will the downfall of the western industry.
He was not alone in his sleep. Volkswagen and Mercedes have been sleeping about as deep and long.
Mercedes has just increased the speed limit for their level 3 self driving system to 95km/h, which means you can legally read a book or watch a movie while the car drives on the Autobahn.
Any car going 95m/h on a German Autobahn is going to cause a lot of problems. It would be a moving accident waiting to happen.
Nope. Semi trucks drive 90 km/h, you can just stay behind one in the right lane.
No, they do 100km/h. That’s the problem.
Then they’re speeding.
Also no Mercedes driver stays in the right lane. Ever.
On the Autobahn?
Trucks are limited to 80km/h.
In Sweden they may drive 90 on highway-equvialent roads
I see, that’s probably a good idea.
Yes, they are. And cruising in the right lane sucks a lot less if you can do something else while driving.
They’re the world’s factory, of course they’ll build better and cheaper.
Wish we still had Chris Farley around instead of his dumbass brother…seriously this is Chris Farley’s brother.
Looked it up, wiki says cousin.
Oh shit, good call. It’s been awhile since I heard about Jim here and I guess since they have a bit of a shared resemblance my brain just decided they were bros.
It says they went to China in 2023 though?
Yes, it does. Your point?
China makes everything better & cheaper, not just cars.
The secret is heavy subsidy, very little worker protections/safety, very little environmental protection, and slave labour from a demographic they’re currently genociding.
Don’t forget the hundreds of billions that global capitalism funneled into China by “outsourcing” absolutely everything they possibly could over the last 30-40 years — devaluing developed world labour markets and environmental regulations, and winding back the clock to an unregulated slave labour market is what made it so attractive.
That was my first thought, but is that much different for say Tesla. They get tax breaks and pay as low as they can. Don’t get me wrong I not protecting China’s way, I’m rather against both. But it would be interesting to see numbers from both sides
Yes it’s very different. Tesla certainly overworks their employees by basically expecting them to do overtime, and engages in anti-union shadiness, but that pales in comparison to utilising slave labour from a religious minority group they subjugate and have even been known to sterilise, as well as harm family members of those who aren’t behaving as the CCP wants them to.
Tesla still has to abide by US environmental regulations, which while not as strict as you’d find in Europe, are a hell of a lot stricter than China.
Tesla still has to follow construction and safety laws that, again while not super strict like in much of Europe, is a hell of a lot stricter than China.
The US also doesn’t subsidise exported Teslas in a move to exterminate foreign car companies before ramping up prices.
Did you just seriously try to compare China factories to Tesla? This place really is just an absurd bubble.
For reference in Mexico they are making 5k a year vs 50k. I’m sure it’s rainbows and kittens over at byd.
It’s lemmy.ml. They’re always like this.
Not just subsidies the CCP decides how much the car makers have to produce. They are overproducing and the Chinese market is saturated, there are graveyards full of unused EVs because nobody wants to buy last year’s lower range versions. And now they dumping that over production onto the rest of the world.
I think you got something mixed up there. The saying does not go:
If you want it to last, buy made in China!
It goes:
Buying cheap is buying twice
And China really sells the cheapest crap there is. It isn’t even a competition.
That’s not how you spell “Xinjang camps” …
America has more prisoners than China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
I don’t see what this has to do with the fact that China utilises slave labour from a religious minority group they are currently genociding to aid in their construction and manufacturing sector.
To my knowledge, you go to prison in the US when you commit a crime, as opposed to a labour camp where you are sterilised then made to build Fords under threat of death.
you go to prison in the US when you commit a crime
Gotta keep’em prisons profitable…
America also uses slave prison labour
And America has more incarcerated people than China, despite China having way more people.
No…just no. China’s prison population is not counted correctly, just from their forced reeducation camps, its estimated they have 1-2 million people in them. The usa has around 1.2 million in prison. So no china does not have less prisoners. I don’t know where this bullshit lie showed up but it’s been repeated way to long.
Does the USA have a problem with incarcerating people for non-violent offenses, hell yes, but that’s a whole different argument.
China is also much larger than US. Even with your fantasy numbers US has more prisoners per capita.
America is a authoritarian nation. You guys just killed a guy and several bystanders over a 2.9 dollar fare ffs.
Lol @ fantasy numbers…only a tankie would think that.
Yea we have problems, but acting like china is better is hilariously wrong.
Ok, putting aside for a moment China’s totally honest and not at all fudged number of incarcerated people…
The US allowing prison labour is something I’m disgusted by.
But it’s still a far cry from abducting people based on their religion, sometimes sterilising them so they can’t have kids, threatening them with their life, threatening their family, and forcing them to work in factories or in construction, then using that slave labour to undercut and kill foreign competition.
Don’t try to twist this into a “you’re complaining about China therefore you think the US is great”. I’m saying China is far worse. Because they are, and only a complete muppet would think otherwise.
Maybe you’re ok with what China does (slavery and genocide), but I am not.
Everything you accuse China of, the US is guilty of the same or worse. How many people in the US are in jail for the crime of being black?
I never said China is great. They are horrible. The US is just worse.
I don’t want what you’re smoking.
Thank you for the reference link.
China has one hell of a note on that page:
b. See info about additional detainees, and alleged detainees, at Re-education through labor, Laogai, and Xinjiang internment camps.
There’s no way in Hell a country with a population in the billions has lower incarnation numbers than one with a few hundred million. That is just statistically impossible. It all comes down to what you count as incarnated. This is like the US “solving” its unemployment crisis by not counting people who think about maybe looking for work sometime as not unemployed. These numbers are self reported, so they should be taken with a big grain of salt.
Because China executes at a rate 100x the US, that we know of, believed to be 1000x.
No person, no prisoner. --Stalin
Also, Tibet and Xinjiang.
They also have 100x we many executions as we have, probably closer to 1000x.
you just executed an innocent man: https://lemmy.ml/post/20527494
Yeah, so we’re still what, 10k behind China this year?
You mean cheaper and worse, there are little to no regulations and if there are any, inspectors are paid off as China is corrupt AF. and the cheaper part is because the general factory workers are kept extremity poor to uphold the cheap labor, next to the Uyghurs in concentration camps who are forced to work for free. There are no rights or regulations for factory workers, so no protective clothing or gear, no safe work environment, while working with extremity toxic materials as those are cheaper then the safer alternatives. Working 12 to 16 hours per day, as young as 8 years old, 6 to 7 days a week, no sick days, no holidays. There is no quality control. There is media control, so every online post of a spontaneously combusted EV, which are maaaaany, is removed.
So you confuse quality with quantity. Yeah, it’s cheaper. But at what cost. Not just the lives of the Chinese workers, those toxins are also in the products we use.
Not necessarily. China makes all the fancy stuff Americans are super proud of.
If safety were a real issue, the gov wouldn’t have attempted to ban them based on tariffs
Ps: your entire first paragraph could have been about American meat processors and I wouldn’t have noticed
Lol their entire comment reads like a mishmash fever-dream of state department prop. I can’t even in this thread mannn ill leave these folks to to you.
Chinese government has entered chat
Hang on, lemme make a phone call
“president xi? i’ve been compromised… yes, again”
If safety wouldn’t be a real issue those products wouldn’t be banned in the EU. Regulations in the US are often very weird, loose and corrupt as well.
Nice Americans are proud of stuff. That doesn’t make it safe. Remember, there are Americans proud of Trump, guns, the cybertruck, racism, etc. “Proud” isn’t a safety standard.
Ps: Nice American meat processors are fucked up as well. The entire country is fucked up. Nice. Let’s be proud of it and everything becomes safe again
Ok without devolving to ridicule every message, the point it that just because stuff is made in China, it is not necessarily cheap (as in crappy, low quality or unsafe).
I’d like to know what is unsafe about these cars and whether or not this is a real consideration. So far, all I seem to get is protectionism and platitudes.
This is a nice video which sums it up pretty well, concerning EV’s. Many are coming to the US and EU market too, like BYD is doing now for example. They are growing faster then Tesla, threatening to surpass Tesla sales soon.
There are many articles about Chinese EV’s spontaneously combusting or exploding. And that’s just the EV’s.
There are many products containing extremity toxic materials which are imported anmass through Chinese digital market places like alibaba etc, but also as parts for American produced products. Products like cheap 3D printer filament, children toys, car parts, metals, food (with pesticides), etc. It’s hard to check everything, it’s hard to regulate everything, especially when loads of it is produced in a country where there is little to no regulations but instead loads of corruption. It’s imported by hundreds of thousands of shipping containers per day. Sure, some products are fine. But there are many which are toxic and sometimes deadly and we often find out about it way too late. Regulating takes time. China finds loopholes. It’s standard operating procedures.
Yea I agree with so much of what you are saying, China gets a pass to distribute cheap dangerous crap cause at least it was cheaper for the middle man selling it.
But also:anmass
Enmasse its another French loan word.
But then, how tariffs make all those dangers OK?
PS: sorry but the video is just some Vlogger rant with no evidence presented.
Tariffs don’t make them ok, but invisible. For instance, phones are produced in China for 95%. Then they are shipped to Vietnam, finished to 100% and shipped to the US without the China tariffs. Whatever happened in China during the 95% is unregulated and unregistered. Whenever it is shipped from China directly there are regulations for the construction of parts and the materials used. But already finished parts without this info which are imported from somewhere else can miss this info, like the 95% phones shipped to Vietnam have. Vietnam needs to declare whatever they used for the 5% for the regulations and the other 95% is declared as a pre-made product. This is how toxic materials are able to enter the western markets without anyone knowing it and how China tariffs only help covering up the use of toxins by shipping goods through hubs in other countries and the production of products without any safety regulation resulting in exploding batteries for example. And for food products to be unknowingly covered with highly toxic pesticides. Don’t underestimate the corruption in China, it’s like the US x2.
Oh and the video is just a yt vid, I know, but he has a lot of Chinese sources as he lived there for several years and he nicely sums up all the articles I’ve read about this all so far. He uncovers a lot of corruption which the Chinese government desperately tries to hide. I’ve seen different sources backing him up.
Until the brand goes poof because China didn’t like something they did and poof; now you have a ghost car. Good luck finding repair parts for your car; and fixing the server connection required features
You are correct, but that has happened with American brands (even cars) before
At half the price of other EVs, I bet an entire new class of service stores, half mechanic shop, half third party parts, half mods, would spring into existence if these cars are allowed in the market
Instead, we protect the horrible local brands
American manufacturers need to provide parts for 10 years after the last of the same model car rolled off the assembly line. Good luck forcing Chinese brands to respect that.
Why? doesn’t Toyota, Kia, Hyundai, SaaB and all the non-American brands already do this? why would China not be able to do it?
A ton of the parts for the American cars actually come from China, why would it be harder for China to do what they already do on behalf of the American manufacturers?
It’s not about whether they can, it’s about whether they will.
Spoiler: they won’t.
Edit: saw an article talking about some of the issues that happen when one of these companies goes away: https://www.thedrive.com/news/chinas-connected-car-collapse-is-a-warning-for-the-american-market
Again, not sure why you are so certain about that when China is already manufacturing the parts for the companies you trust to have them
Because it’s standard practice in China to just close a company and restart it under a new name. The government can decide to shut down everything overnight.
Look at parts availability for stuff sold by Chinese brands.
I can find parts for Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Mazda, etc all made in China. Why does it work for American and foreign companies making every part they sell in China but it wouldn’t work for a Chinese company
And, if that is the case, wouldn’t it make more sense to just force them to establish some corporate headquarters in the USA (as they rest of the brands do)?
That’s established and stable brands that manufacture things in China which is completely different from Chinese brands building things in China and that can just close their doors tomorrow morning and leave the owners without any source for parts.
If an established manufacturer closes their doors tomorrow morning the same issue arises, the difference is that Chinese companies are known to do that and the Chinese government sometimes is responsible for closing them or simply doesn’t care about the effect on customers. They can reopen the following day and produce the same items as before but they won’t send you parts for the thing they were producing the day prior because it’s not the same company anymore.
Our tariffs aren’t there to protect local brands they protect every foreign brand in the US too which make up 2/3 of the market.
never had this experience before.
But I had exactly this issue many times with Google cancelling stuff I like.
