Doug Ford can go fuck himself!
What? Of course I read the headline. The point still stands!
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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He "doesn't want give up it"?
Hey, out of curiosity, whats your opinion on NATO?
In response to the title, he better be driving the competitors vehicles often to understand what they are doing well.
I think this is a classic case of a company being unable to disrupt itself.
Ford makes internal combustion engines. Ford makes F-150s. Undoubtedly every executive, marketing guy, R&D engineer, and factory worker is focused on how many F-150s are being produced and sold. Anybody who shows up to a meeting suggesting they don't sell more F150 is booted out the door (metaphorically).
They probably also thought there's no way a Chinese mobile phone / tea kettle / Wi-Fi router manufacturer could ever kick their ass with a car. Yet here we are.
Around 1995 the f150 hit the pinnacle of its design. Such a wonderful truck. Basically runs forever. I have one. My university has a fleet of them.
I wish they'd make them again.
Ford also sell a shit ton of electric vehicles.
The Lightning is still stupid expensive but I’d love to have one
I had to budget a lot to get mine and I fucking love it. I do wish there was a design choice or an after market mod that would allow me to sacrifice some of that frunk space for better visibility.
They seem to be aggressively discontinuing non elect vehicles. Fiesta and Mondeo are gone, Focus is discontinued this year.
I have a lot of respect for him for this, telling everyone that your company makes a bad product and needs to do better is a bold move.
Jim Farley has been quite open about EVs - and he's been conducting hands-on market research. He's done podcasts on the topic.
I don't know why everyone grabs their pitchforks for this - they're trying to address competition to modernize their offerings.
Why would we buy his cars ?
He can afford the tariffs. Everyone else gets a F-150 recall machine ?
How can you simper for him and want to be taken seriously ?
He drives competitor's cars to understand what they're like. Many automotive CEOs do this. Don't panic
I am just mad that free trade is only allowed when it benefits the rich, but the moment the Chinese produce a very affordable EV that would help millions of Americans while helping us fight climate change, suddenly we aren't allowed to buy it because our neo-feudal oligarchs can't take a cut for themselves....
Free trade is a farce and our entire system is rotten.
I only disagree because everybody having fancy electric cars is not the solution. Public transit is
Just in case anyone needs to hear it, EVs are still cars. Perhaps an improvement, but not a solution.
I agree. And for those that need a vehicle because they live in the middle of fucking nowhere, EVs are a good middle ground.
I get why construction teams don't use them, since one bad charging connection overnight can bring the entire project to a grinding halt for the next day. Meanwhile if Joe forgot to gas up the backhoe before leaving last night it's only a minor delay while someone goes to do Joe's job.
For anyone and everyone else, EVs are generally viable and in many cases, a much better choice than the alternatives.
For anyone in a city, the fact that you feel you need a car, is the problem.
Construction/trades are actually a pretty good use case for the EV pickups. As you say, it is a hard stop if they’re not charged, but a short trip carrying tools and people to the job site and subsequent short trips to the supply house are usually easily within reach. It’s the backhoe with 8 hrs of runtime that’s difficult to replace, and wiring them to the grid is a bad idea because they’re inherently cable-seeking. (In seriousness, I think it’s an idea that can be explored but is largely impractical. What construction site has a 200kw grid connection, what size cables are you using that won’t be “adjusted” by the local tweakers, and how do you handle an accident.)
Ford makes an EV version of their transit van and its been crazy popular with trades here in the states.
All good points, and I especially agree about the cable seeking part (working in IT we refer to it as a fiber seeking backhoe, but the same principle applies).
As for a grid connection, I'm not sure 200kW is strictly required for just a backhoe, but if we're taking the example to a practical place of EVs running the show rather than diesel, all of the construction equipment charging at once is probably going to need 200kW combined to charge, if not more; so the point stands IMO.
Just as a mental exercise, thinking about the backhoe specifically, getting it connected to a grid, IMO, would basically require that a temporary structure be erected over where it will be operating to provide a line to the unit from above, since it may need to turn any/all direction(s). Which assumes that it's working in a location where there is free space over the work area, and any time the unit is moved the grid attachment scaffolding would need to go with it.
I imagine the power line would run up one of the legs of the scaffold, to a mid point, then there would be a tensioner on an "extension cable" (of sorts), to the backhoe to avoid any slack that could be caught up in the normal operation of the vehicle.
Needless to say, this is a lot more work and bluntly, wildly impractical for construction use.
I'm just saying it could work, but there's no way in hell any construction company is jumping through the hoops to make it work, even if a backhoe company built one, which they won't because it's wildly impractical and nobody would ever buy one.
Thinking economically about it, there's probably 10,000 cars being driven for every construction vehicle in use, so it's not exactly a large target to focus on. IMO, one of the bigger areas where we should be trying to save emissions is in marine travel. Specifically large cargo ships. With commerce being as international as it is, and only increasing in demand, those ships are running almost 24/7, usually on diesel or another fossil fuel.
Solving that problem would probably have a much larger impact than trying to get construction crews off of using diesel in their equipment.
Just a thought.
The 200kw is really more about peak output but peak isn’t constant, so a small battery pack would service that part.
wildly impractical for construction use.
It could work for some types of long term projects. But probably not worth the development costs.
Marine is a significant opportunity. Bunker oil is nasty to burn!
Honestly, if I was a Ford shareholder, I would be dumping my shares as fast as possible - there's no coming back from an open admission of defeat like that. He flat out said they can't win, the barriers of entry are too high, and the key one (software like Xiaomi) doesn't even really exist yet.
As others point out, the western automakers did this to themselves. Hoo boy did China out capitalism. Ironic
Unfortunately, we live in a post-truth society where the vast majority of people have traded the pursuit of truth for the comfort of confirmation bias.
And the last 6 months have shown us that the stock market is mostly just vibes and manipulation rather than being grounded in facts and reality.
The F150 is America’s best selling vehicle and has been for the last 40+ years.
Yes, but the dynamics of demand is rapidly changing. Look at the micromobility sector - there was nothing 5ish years ago, and now scooter and ebikes are everywhere.
the only thing keeping Chinese vehicles out are trade restrictions. Look at Europe: VW is in dire straights because they can't compete with Chinese EVs.
To be fair, VW is in it mainly because of Diesel gate and the several billions they owe because of it, but yeah as a consequence they also severely lack innovation especially in EVs
If you had even a tiny brain in your head you would see he's driving it to test out the competition. The article says he's made a lot of trips to China this year to look at their ev cars.
See. I see this as the ceo version of "market research". It could bring something better.
Tbh, maybe it's because I just watched 'Ford vs Ferrari', but imo I would want the higher ups to acknowledge they are fucking up and then change it.
So you have an opinion based off an ad disguise as a movie you watched, you’re surely gonna love that new F1 movie for certain you love advertisement so much
I don't think it's market research though said research can look like this. The messaging doesn't seem to line up.
I feel like the US is gonna be the cheap labor very shortly.
Russia style petrostate feels the most likely. And in a time where fossil fuels are going through their death spiral (if in a somewhat prolonged manner).
That fucker should burn at a pyre with all the other lobbyists.
Why is it humbling? The US and EU actively hindered EV development when they weren’t ignoring it entirely. Put this man back in preschool so he can learn cause and effect, because this is nonsense. Or he’s lying for any number of reasons, which is my guess.
Who cares about some billionaire's opinion. I would assume he restructured his portfolio and wants to see some gains.
Fwiw a lot of late stage CEOs even of big companies are way less rich than you’d think. Jim Farleys net worth is 21 million dollars. Still very very rich, but not billionaire rich.
Lol, wow. Not even Ford's CEO will drive a Ford anymore. The US is going to crash so hard
Once you've met a few CEOs, you quickly realize that most of them literally don't use or even get close to their own product unless someone else is showing them.
Entirely agree. It’s worth noting here that ford doesn’t make any cars anymore. Crossovers and trucks only. Profit over product led them here.
Even if they were good I wouldn't get one for the annoying open door noise
Good move.