Recently, there’s been some bad news out of Detroit. Ford’s backing off on some upcoming EV models, including a three-row SUV many had been looking forward to, and will instead be focusing more on hybrids. GM has been having different problems with software, recently laying off 1,000 developers after a string of Silicon Valley types failed to acclimate to more traditional corporate culture.
While these companies would like to have us all believe that making EVs and software for EVs is simply too hard, other companies like Tesla and Rivian have been doing a lot better. Tesla is now making more EVs than anybody, even beating out ICE models in some segments. Rivian is still climbing the profit ladder, but is selling software to Volkswagen, a pretty good sign that “legacy auto” is struggling in odd ways while newcomers are having no problem churning out EVs.
So, we need to ask ourselves why these established players are struggling while newcomers are doing just fine.
Silicon Valley types failed to acclimate to more traditional corporate culture
Ford: We suck at software, hire different people to do it better.
Also Ford: The different people are doing things differently and my ancient management structure is scared and confused! Fire them!
Bringing in experts to fix your problems, then not letting them. Classic.
Looked at another way: People with no process control comprehension had difficulty understanding the requirements of safety critical software and are best building mobile apps rather than truly high reliability, critical software.
Just a thought as someone that’s worked among Silicon Valley Types for decades.
The problem is almost certainly less about management style and more about development cycle differences. Ford’s inability to understand software development strategies, and developers’ inability to understand hard requirements and tight scoping.
I think there’s truth in both camps here.
Certainly software developers don’t understand safety critical design a lot of the time.
Also mechanical / production engineers don’t understand software development a lot of the time.
However, EVs need very little software. Trouble is, they’ve been positioned as luxury cars, which do.
IMO a good luxury car doesn’t need a bunch of bullshit software either. Making a vehicle that works primarily as a vehicle and lastly as a gadget should really be the focus IMO. But these companies all thought there was easy money to be saved by eliminating buttons and replacing it with touch screens running software. Unfortunately, very few of them compared the reliability of a button with a 10 million cycle rating to software running on an ARM processor on a commodity LCD panel.
Younger consumers that are buying expensive vehicles for the first time also don’t realize that luxury doesn’t mean sparse plastic interior with a touch screen, but rather the quality of materials and components used in the vehicle. Perhaps that’s the industry changing, or perhaps is naive people being ripped off, only time will tell.
my kingdom for a sub $25k, 420 mile per charge, hatchback EV. Make that, make it dependable, without any subscriptions or fancy electronics that accidentally brick the car out of nowhere, and you’ll be able to buy the bank.
Getting that in a new ICE vehicle is nearing impossible. Hell, used car prices were topping that number out for a while.
And yet their costs did not go up that much. The real complaint here is they don’t want to make an economic car anymore. Not that nobody would buy it.
I don’t think you can say on one hand they are “losing money on every EV” and that they don’t want to sell economical cars. But they are still a corporation and will take as much as customers will pay.
They did in the Bolt EUV. And then they stopped making it to make more money. Fuckers.
my kingdom for a sub $25k, 420 mile per charge, hatchback EV.
The Aptera is supposed to be ~$31k and ~$400 mi. but that’s going to extreme levels of efficiency to get there. Any legacy brand could probably do it for $25k but it wouldn’t be profitable enough.
However I’ve mostly lost faith in them.
It’s never going to happen in a “normal” car like a hatchback. At least not until battery prices are driven into the ground.
Keep in mind the more batteries you add, the less efficient it becomes, and the more batteries it needs.
including a three-row SUV many had been looking forward to,
Who. Who was looking forward to another fuckhuge 8 ton SUV on the road?
A whole lot of people that neither need one nor can actually control the damn thing
I suspect the fact that they killed it tells you exactly how many people had been looking forward to it. Nobody. The market for $100k behemoth SUVs is pretty well tapped out, and Ford almost certainly knew they weren’t going to actually sell any. I don’t know why it’s a bad idea to scrap a vehicle that absolutely isn’t going to sell in numbers worth manufacturing.
Lots of people want to switch to EVs but there basically aren’t many options for 7-seaters (the Tesla X and Y both have 7 seater configurations but the back row is basically useless for actual normal sized humans). So the 7-seater+ gasoline powered SUV still sells like crazy in the U.S. market.
I have 4 kids. If we want to travel as a family and not have to take 2 cars, it is a prerequisite.
Notable performance was seen in the F-150 Lightning, with sales up 77% to 7,902 units, and the Mustang Mach-E, with sales increasing 46.5% to 12,645 units. The E-Transit van also saw a significant rise, with sales surging 95.5% to 3,410 units.
Uh huh. Really struggling.
That’s a total of 23,957. You think that’s good? Tesla in a slump sold 443,956 in Q2.
Teslas are also pieces if shit. Should fort switch to making unreliable, poorly built shitboxes with crappy interior materials and designs? I don’t personally think so. Also, how much of Ford’s production run was sold versus Tesla’s?
Should have searched reliability before posting this. Tesla has the Mach E beat. I hate tesla as much as anyone but I’m not going to spread bullshit about them.
The average person can’t afford a $150k truck… Too much emphasis on computation instead of a vehicle that goes from A to B
F150 Lightning Pro $55k new, as low as $35 used. 200 miles real world range. No more tech than a regular ICE F150.
They no longer offer the Pro in 2024 models. I believe it starts with the XLT around $65k.
