Welcome to the Daily 5 report for Monday, Aug. 11.
This wasn't just some new future product announcement. Ford Motor Co.'s $2 billion plan for its Kentucky assembly operations in Louisville carries the weight of a new way to build EVs along with a far cheaper platform for as many as eight marques.
It puts enormous pressure on CEO Jim Farley and his team to deliver the goods without a major quality hiccup. We've been hearing about Ford's skunkworks team working on a secret project for several months and this is what emerged.
"We have all lived through far too many 'good college tries' by Detroit automakers to make affordable vehicles that ends up with idled plants, layoffs and uncertainty," Farley said in a statement. "So, this had to be a strong, sustainable and profitable business. From Day 1, we knew there was no incremental path to success. We empowered a tiny skunkworks team three time zones away from Detroit. We tore up the moving assembly line concept and designed a better one."
Sign up for the Daily 5 report here.
There isn't much time.
Ford said the first product to roll off this potential game-changing "assembly tree" production line will be a midsize, four-door electric pickup set to launch in 2027 with a price around $30,000.
It's too early to tell whether investors will buy into this bold plan. Ford shares have been stuck between $10 and $15 since 2022. It's also too early to tell how car buyers will embrace an affordable EV in 2027 with no federal tax incentives on the hood.
But Ford is calling this its "Model T moment." We'll be watching closely to see how this project gets executed.
Speaking of EVs, the industry's reliance on lithium got some disruption today with news that China's CATL is idling one of the largest lithium mining operations in the world. The move sent lithium prices higher — and boosted stock prices of companies in the lithium business.
Meanwhile, our annual Future Product Pipeline series this week delves into the plans for European brands in the U.S. Today's featured story focuses on Volkswagen. To see the entire series featuring every brand for 2025, you can go here.
That's it for now. If you want to see this story in your browser, click here.
— Philip Nussel, online editor
No comments:
Post a Comment