Tesla’s irrational valuation and Mark Fields’ irrational ouster both stem from the same thing: decades of alienation between legacy automakers and the public. A lot of consumers consider big automakers boorish and auto dealers beyond boorish, but had nowhere to turn until lately.
Mark Fields, CEO of Ford Motor Company, has been pushed aside by the company and several of his top lieutenants are busy updating their resumés. Joe Hinrichs, currently head of operations for the Americas; Raj Nair, the global technology and product development director; and Mark LaNeve, head of sales, service and marketing, are all subject to being fired or reassigned according to company sources.
Following in Tesla’s footsteps (quite a few years later, that is), Ford will now begin rolling out some of its software upgrades via over-the-air updates — starting with the addition of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay to its Sync 3 outfitted 2016 vehicles in the coming days.
Is it true that people aren’t interested in buying electric cars, as Ford CEO Mark Fields claims? EV sales are hovering around 1% of the market in the US despite all that has been written about them and significant increases in the number of electric car charging stations available. “Ah hah!” Fields and his colleagues say. “See? We told you so.” Gina Coplon-Newfield, the director of electric vehicles initiative at the Sierra Club sees things differently. “When manufacturers say buyers aren’t interested in buying electric vehicles, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” she says.
Once upon a time, there was an epic monthly sales battle in the US between the Nissan LEAF and the Chevy Volt. They were neck and neck for ages, sometimes changing places several months in a row. Nowadays, the market is growing, and more relevant is probably looking at the Chevy Bolt, Chevy Volt, Ford Energi models, Nissan LEAF, Toyota Prius Prime, and maybe BMW i3. The cars are in a similar price range and class, but each offers a unique mix of features and style. Importantly, they are also the models that are available “nationwide.”
The 5 fleets that will be trialling Ford’s upcoming Transit Custom plug-in hybrid (PHEV) van in London, as part of a pilot program beginning there this fall, have now been revealed by Ford.
One of the main figures behind Uber’s self-driving vehicle development efforts, vice president of global vehicle programs Sherif Marakby, has left Uber, the company revealed on Monday.
Following a couple of years of low sales in the market, Ford has officially ceased production of the Focus Electric in Europe (at the facility in Saarlouis, Germany, to be specific).
The world’s wireless EV charging leader, Plugless (parent company = Evatran), has been tracking some fun figures and recently shared some electric vehicle milestones with CleanTechnica. The first was that the Nissan LEAF, Chevy Volt, and Tesla Model S have jointly logged nearly 10 billion electric miles (according to estimates, since no one has the precise figure at their fingertips), and all modern EVs have now logged over 11 billion electric miles.
Ford has revealed what it describes as the industry’s first pursuit-rated hybrid police car, the Ford Police Responder Hybrid Sedan. This is part of Ford’s $4.5 billion “electrified” vehicles push (hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and pure electrics).
