AP – Ford CEO Jim Farley (AP, pic below) said the company will stop competing in over-served market segments and instead will place big bets on connected vehicles and digital services.
The days of Ford being all things to all people are over, Farley said at the company’s capital markets day event yesterday.
The company, he said, has been “stuck in a box”, with thin profit margins, weak growth and low stock valuation.
Ford, Farley said, will emphasise software and services as well as iconic vehicles such as pickup trucks, large SUVs, commercial vehicles and advanced second-generation electric vehicles. He said the company is eliminating waste to close a cost gap with the best in the industry with a “lean disciplined operating system” that reaches into all Ford factories.
For example, by the time Ford rolls out a new version of the F-150 pickup truck later this year, it will have cut 2,400 parts from the bill of materials for the truck from the existing model, the company’s internal combustion unit Ford Blue President Kumar Galhotra said.
Ford’s F-Series pickups are the top-selling vehicles in the United States (US) and a huge profit centre for the company.
Farley said by focussing on software, services and Ford’s strengths in products, the company won’t be as vulnerable to a downturn as in the past. He said the company has let complexity “overrun our business as we tried to be all things to all people.”
“We will focus on growth segments where we lead,” Galhotra said.
Farley said Ford will be competing differently, going for tailored ownership experiences rather than “jockeying for slivers of market share” with complex vehicles in over-served market segments. He said the company will go to non-negotiated prices, working with dealers. Ford said it will get to a 10-per-cent pretax profit margin in 2026. It reiterated 2023 full-year guidance of USD9 billion to USD11 billion in adjusted pretax profits.
Farley said the 10-per-cent profit margin is just a step along Ford’s journey, and the company has even greater ambitions.
Ford Motor Co also said it cut deals with a number of companies to supply its rapidly growing electrical vehicle division, Ford Model e.
Ford will get over 100,000 metric tonnes of lithium hydroxide from Albemarle, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Compass Minerals International announced a multiyear deal to supply Ford with up to 40 per cent of the battery-grade lithium carbonate coming from its project in Utah.
EnergySource Minerals will supply the carmaker with lithium hydroxide from a new site in Imperial Valley, California, and Nemaska Lithium, a Canadian miner, will supply Ford with 13,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide annually for 11 years.
Because the materials are coming from the US and Canada, it ensures that Ford’s electric vehicles will qualify for new federal tax credits, making them more competitive.
