Ford Takes Backseat on Plug-in R&D

 “If customers aren’t buying them, we’re not making them,” Ted Miller, Ford’s senior manager of energy storage, said in an interview yesterday.

This whole article ticked me off. Excuses, excuses. And none of them really make sense.

I have the feeling that Ford is just holding out to see when (not if) their F-150s start selling again. These articles keep saying the market is adjusting away from interest in trucks to smaller cars … completely missing that it’s because they cost less to run. Make trucks that cost less to run, and they’ll see a surge in interest again.

For now, Ford says, they aren’t going to put money into developing plug-in hybrids. They want to see if the cars are successful for other people first.

Ford’s logic is that many people park on the street or don’t have a garage, and no access to plug-ins. If we all jumped on that train of thought, no company – no human – would ever make anything new. With a major transportation method changing, other things will have to change, too. It’s like saying we shouldn’t put public charging stations in place because we don’t currently have any vehicles that can use them.

And it goes around and around.

Oh, but here they are dangling that carrot again. The hybrid Fusion. The hybrid Milan. They can’t focus on plug-ins because they’re busy developing regular hybrids. How can other companies pull this off, but Ford – the world’s 3rd leading automaker – not have the resources for that? I’m all for being frugal but that doesn’t make sense.

Then again, who knows? Maybe they are developing something monumental and in a few months, when I have a chance to test drive the Fusion, I will eat my words. One can only hope!

Source: Bloomberg

[Image: Ford]