Ford: We're Canceling $1.6 Billion Mexico Facility, Investing In Electric and US Plant (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today at the Flat Rock Assembly Plant, Ford Motor Company CEO Mark Fields unveiled a large-scale electric vehicle initiative that will run through the company's next five years. Ford plans to invest $4.5 billion in electric vehicle production by 2020, and the company said it will produce 13 new electric vehicles, including a Mustang, an F-150, police cars, and a Transit Custom van. Additionally, Fields revealed that Ford would be canceling a previously announced $1.6 billion-production facility in Mexico. Instead, the company wants to invest $700 million in the existing Flat Rock facility, generating 700 new jobs focused on EV and autonomous initiatives at that location, according to Ford. Ford described seven of the 13 upcoming EVs during its press conference today. The F-150 Hybrid will be available by 2020 in North America and the Middle East, and Fields noted it'll be powerful enough to stand-in for on-site generators in a pinch. The Mustang Hybrid will deliver "V8 power and even more low-end torque" according to Ford; it too is intended for a 2020 release. Generally, electric motors are well suited to applications where you want a lot of immediate torque, so their presence should work well in a light duty truck like the F-150. Among the other notable vehicles highlighted, Ford is planning a fully electric small SUV that can "deliver an estimated range of at least 300 miles" by 2020. The company also wants to produce an autonomous vehicle "designed for commercial ride hailing or ride sharing" in North America by 2021.

Comments

Yay

[Hognoxious]

Go Trumperor!!!!!

Re:Yay

[JoeMerchant]

Afraid of a tax-spanking, Ford plays into the hands of the President Elect - and they will be richly rewarded for their grandstanding.

Meanwhile, a city in Mexico just lost $1.6B of direct investment and many hundreds of jobs. That's O.K., they'll have plenty of other opportunities; for one thing, Trump will keep many highly profitable drugs illegal (and therefore profitable.)

Re:Yay

[Captain Splendid]

Afraid of a tax-spanking

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, no. Trump or the GOP aren't going to be raising anyone's taxes or levying any import fees. Makes for a cute story though.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't give a fuck about Mexico!

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are Mexican jobs my responsibility? Where were you when people were losing their jobs in the US?

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they meant a Tarrif Spanking if they moved the manufacturing out of country and imported back in.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump will keep many highly profitable drugs illegal
 
Yeah, because Hillary was going to do something different?
 
I can already see the alt-left's dialogue for the next 4 years... "Obamy said that legalizing Mari-G-Wahna was a great idea but those dastardly Republicans!!!!1!!!!!!!"
 
Give it the fuck up. Obama escalated the drug war and militarized the police to a higher level then even Bush Jr. then he needed to yank around stoners and gays to stay in office so he changed his tune without actually doing anything to directly help either camp.
 
It's a nice sentiment for him to have when his foot is half way out the door. I agree with it 100%. But ultimately the guy never did a fucking thing aside from run his mouth and play politics while adults are sitting in cells for a couple joints and facing a prospect of a criminal record that will disqualify from a lot of great employment opportunities.
 
Face facts here. No matter who won the 2016 election the same truths are there: Perpetual war, NSA up in your business without a warrant, record high national debt and drug legalization will still be backburner issue resurrected from time to time to tally up some fast votes.
 
Oh, and before you spread any other misinformation around... Marijuana can be reclassified without the need for congressional intervention.
 
Have a nice day, asshole.

Re:Yay

[JoeMerchant]

Afraid of a tax-spanking

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, no. Trump or the GOP aren't going to be raising anyone's taxes or levying any import fees. Makes for a cute story though.

Ford only considered Mexico for the plant because of NAFTA and the tax structures under NAFTA. With Trump loudly boasting that he's restructuring NAFTA, that restructuring will (hopefully) result in more favorable tax structures for Ford locating the plant in Flint (as it should be, IMO.)

However, do not delude yourself or anyone else that GOP == "no new taxes", just because W chanted it like an idiot throughout his election cycle most assuredly does not make it true. Look at the historical record, in practice the GOP raises taxes just as much and sometimes more than the other side.

Re:Yay

[unixisc]

Afraid of a tax-spanking, Ford plays into the hands of the President Elect - and they will be richly rewarded for their grandstanding.

Meanwhile, a city in Mexico just lost $1.6B of direct investment and many hundreds of jobs. That's O.K., they'll have plenty of other opportunities;

How did the Mexican city lose something that was yet to be built, or that was yet to hire anybody?

Re:Yay

[wyHunter]

Um, it wasn't W that changed it this, it was his dad.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump aside, am I the only one who thinks the hybrid (or hopefully full electric) F-150 would be cool.. ??

Re:Yay

[Minupla]

One would presume the same way the US can gain jobs that had yet to be lost?

Re:Yay

[the_Bionic_lemming]

I'd be interested in a hybrid one. Since it can be used as an onsite generator, it would be great to keep the fridge and freezer running during a power outage.

As long as it's diesel and I can afford it, I'll most likely buy one.

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[Anonymous Coward]

And at the end of your screed, it's still a fact that Mr. Trump can take no credit for this, despite the CEO's statement.

An economic engine doesn't run at the behest of one man, no matter how much he would like it to do so, due to simple economic inertia. This is the Carrier story with a few more zeros added -- nothing more.

Re:Yay

[Frosty Piss]

How did the Mexican city lose something that was yet to be built, or that was yet to hire anybody?

Really, is it that hard?

They lost the potential that was there when it looked good for Ford because of NAFTA, which Trump has said he plans to gut. With NAFTA firmly in place, Ford would have built in Mexico, Trump or no Trump (it's about making money). But with NAFTA sure to be repealed or whatever you do with such things, it's no longer a "sure thing" for Ford, and Ford expects (with good reason) that Trump will throw some tax breaks their way.

See?

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is diesel preferred?

Re:Yay

[AndyKron]

Don't forget that wall they're going to pay for too.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

trump can't unilaterally "restructure" nafta. that is a trade treaty between multiple countries, all of which would need to negotiate the "restructuring" and i highly doubt any other party to the treaty would accept trump's changes. if trump calls on congress to pull out of nafta completely, the fallout from doing so would linger linger for a generation.

Re:Yay

[LynnwoodRooster]

I wonder why, in the spirit of your post, you haven't offshored your own job to a dozen workers in India, China, or the Ukraine? You're costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars and dozens of jobs...

Re: Yay

[LynnwoodRooster]

Efficiency. You can get the same range as gas with about half the fuel. Meaning I can fuel up a hybrid diesel truck with 15 gallons of diesel and outperform in terms of efficiency, operating time, and usage the normal 35 gallon diesel-only truck. And I'm not choking on diesel fumes as I sit at stoplights (as a motorcyclist myself, I hate sitting near diesel vehicles at stoplights).

Re:Yay

[JoeMerchant]

Um, it wasn't W that changed it this, it was his dad.

Sorry, they all look alike after awhile. I will grant that his dad looked less like an idiot frat-boy, but the family resemblance was very strong.

Re:Yay

[JoeMerchant]

I wonder why, in the spirit of your post, you haven't offshored your own job to a dozen workers in India, China, or the Ukraine? You're costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars and dozens of jobs...

I've done the remote work thing myself - it's a great gig when you can get it. The dozens of workers in India, China and the Ukraine just don't have what it takes to do what I do - starting with communicating clearly with people who need things done.

Re:Yay

[Z80a]

They're afraid of a population willing to vote on someone like Trump just to get a job.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bitch at me for JoeMerchant tacking on crap that isn't relevant to the topic of the article. I'm simply combatting the alt-left tactic of bring up unrelated material (often laced with lies and ad hominem) to try to make their point. So jam it up your ass too.

Re:Yay

[guruevi]

Sure, it's called an executive order and as Obama is proving very hard the last few days in office, it allows the president broad, unilateral powers to do whatever he damn well wants without any oversight from any other branch of government.

So if Trump wants to get out of NAFTA (for good or for bad), he just has to say so. NAFTA only protects foreign interests, sure there may be some immediate fallout from some nations being really upset they're losing revenue, but what will they do, stop trading with the US?

Re: Yay

[Nidi62]

I would, but it will be massively overpriced for what you get, especially for a Ford. I don't need a work site truck, I just want an electric truck I can commute to work with and do some light hauling for large items for/around the house. Because let's be honest: most people that own trucks never get close to doing the things they show in truck commercials.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

He never said he's pro - Hillary, it's OK to dislike both sides.

Recognize the political discrimination happening here, and how ugly it's making you. We're moving away from "hate your neighbourhood for his skin color" towards "hate your neighbour for his lawn sign". It's just another form of terrible discrimination and the politicians are playing the rage in your head like a harp. They love it.

Re:Yay

[Cmdln Daco]

I have always wondered what HW actually said, when we were told to 'read his lips.' It certainly wasn't 'no new taxes.' Does anybody know if there's a video we can peruse?

Re:Yay

[Cmdln Daco]

A really big part of the good that will come out of a Trump presidency is that Congress will now clip the wings of the Executive Branch and widespread out-of-control Executive Orders will become a thing of the past.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, actually there is a section of NAFTA, 2203 (?) I think, that lets the executive cancel after 6 months notice.

Re:Yay

[hey!]

And also Reagan.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. Ford said they are still moving some car production to Mexico, but to a plant already there. They aren't building the new plant, because demand for smaller vehicles they make in Mexico (Ford Focus compacts were going to the new facility but will now be made in Hermosillo, Mexico) are down so the factory wasn't needed. They are taking the savings from the new plant and expanding in Michigan, but the new production there was already going there. The electric cars weren't ever going to be made in Mexico. The shift of the Focus to Mexico was announced in April and it's still happening. The only thing that's changed is that the lowered demand of small cars from Mexico is down while larger cars from Michigan is up.

It's good for America, but it's not solely due to Trump (or Obama). It's simple economics.

Re: Yay

[Cmdln Daco]

The Ford Ranger is coming back to the US, soon, also. It's probably more practical as a light truck than the F150 which is a full-size. An electric Ford Ranger would be nice.

Re:Yay

[Hylandr]

As a short range toy. Don't expect to haul anything with it.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

One man has changed history before. Many would compare Trump to Hitler. Which is a backhanded way of saying that Trump can move or destroy nations.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

They better start learning the basics of wall building if they want to stay competitive in the next 8 years.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

>How did the Mexican city lose something that was yet to be built, or that was yet to hire anybody?

The Mexican government and the state of San Luis Potosi, brought a land for the factory (hence somebody needed to sell and pack things away) and start to connect services (energy, water, internet, roads), this made temporal jobs and people started to move to the state for look for a job there. Now that the plant is gone, they have a nice land with no factory available and people that bet to get a job there is just at their own. And oh, don't ask that "some local companies can fill the gap" as tanks NAFTA most industrial companies were wiped by American companies.

Only the government will get a compensation for the money spend on this, tough.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, a city in Mexico just lost $1.6B of direct investment and many hundreds of jobs

That's globalisation for you.

Re:Yay

[Darinbob]

Flint workers are so much more expensive than Mexico workers, that tax breaks would not be enough to change Ford's decision making by much. What really happened is more likely what Ford said, there is a downturn in sales and they don't need to expand world wide production with an expensive new plant but instead refurbish an existing plant that is losing work. Of course, they're going to give kudos to Trump because why not get him on your good side.

Re:Yay

[guruevi]

Do you really think either party wants to give up on that sort of control? Trump is still controlled by political interests and if Democrats win any part of the house or senate next election cycle they might want to keep that sort of power in place just to push their agenda later on. To many, Trump is a 4 year deal, some politicians hold onto their offices for decades, so even if Trump is going to be a boy scout about executive orders, the next president will probably be a solid politician.

Re:Yay

[Darinbob]

Everyone knows, or should know, that all politicians lie while campaigning, and even the few cases when they are being sincere they will find that they can not keep their promises when they enter office and see what the reality is. Bush may not have wanted to raise taxes but they were essentially necessary at the time to prevent bigger problems.

Re:Yay

[Frosty Piss]

They aren't building the new plant, because demand for smaller vehicles they make in Mexico (Ford Focus compacts were going to the new facility but will now be made in Hermosillo, Mexico) are down so the factory wasn't needed.

That demand is down IN Mexico, it does not necessarily follow that they would not build a new plant there. The two are only partially connected.

 

Re:Yay

[Darinbob]

Executive orders can only do things within the power of the executive branch. It can't make new laws, it can't ignore laws that are explicit in their intent. Ie, congress already gave the executive the power to create new national monuments, despite the hue and cry when it actually happens. Congress has given various departments the right to create regulations, then whine when the departments actually do so. The courts can override an executive order and have done so in the past, or they can declare it unconstitutional after the issue is moot (ie, Japanese-American interment camps). In some cases the constitution has granted the executive some power (commander in chief, granting of pardons, and the ability to grant recess appointments which will expire, and "take care that laws remain faithfully executed"). Managing the federal government is the responsibility of the executive, so it would seem that the executive has the power to set the minimum wage of federal workers, though that was also criticized as an overreach when Obama did that.

There are a minority of cases where the executive may give orders where congress has acquiesced and has ignored an issue for too long or refuses to vote on an issue either yes or no. That part is controversial of course. I don't think it should be allowed, but I also don't think congress should be allowed to abdicate their own responsibility either. If congress does nothing except sit on their hands then they should not be pointing fingers when the executive takes action.

A variety of interesting sites on the subject. Of interest is here, http://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/28..., where it lists some of the more controversial orders over time.

Re: Yay

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Also, it's what most modern trains use - A diesel/electric hybrid - for the same reason.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

An American company has no obligation to save the world by employing people outside the country. Given how many government resources are poured into helping American companies succeed, that is the People's money, if those companies do not in turn employ a sufficient number of American workers, there's no justification for helping them. The People should get returns on their investments. It's how democracy is supposed to work.

Re:Yay

[the_Bionic_lemming]

trains haul lots off stuff with a diesel / electric system.

Methinks you not know of this...

Re: Yay

[Darinbob]

Every Republican I know dislikes Trump too. The Republicans in congress certainly dislike Trump, they're just tolerating him for now in hopes he'll approve all their proposed changes. They just disliked Hillary more, and held their nose while voting.

Re:Yay

[The Grim Reefer]

One would presume the same way the US can gain jobs that had yet to be lost

I believe that's called "jobs saved". At least that's what I was hearing the president say 6 or 7 years ago. I think the claim was over 1 million jobs were saved from the auto bailout alone.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Wish I could hide every comment you make since they only add noise.

Re: Yay

[Darinbob]

F-150 is a pretty large truck for city commuting. For some reason the light small pickups (mostly Japanese) have fallen out of favor which would work much better for a commuter vehicle that can also do light hauling. What they call "light trucks" today are much bigger than the old Datsun or Isuzu pickups.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't worth it on a hybrid, you need to carry far too much weight to deal with the pollution issues. There's also issues with packaging to accommodate that equipment.

Re: Yay

[the_Bionic_lemming]

You'd have to accept losing mileage as diesel motors provide much more mpg than gas motors.

which is why I would only buy it if it was a diesel. The weight issue is negligible.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are the jobs of my fellow US workers my responsibility?

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[WindBourne]

Nope, dad did not change that. GOP love to raise taxes. Just not on their own.

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[Anonymous Coward]

No, but American capitalism and what the country preached to the world with MIT school and almost any other respectable university in the US did so. Also ignorant to the bone that you don't know Mexico is the second largest trading partner in the US, and that if you add the amazing wealth and american-owned profits in Mexico, this country has a surplus with Mexico. If you annoy Mexico's economy you will have HUGE crossing and a much worst situation. Mexico is a Pro US as any country can get and since NAFTA has benefited little. I think you will be suprised how your life doesn't become better when you start making enemies all over the world like Trump is doing. Just cutting tourism in half would eliminate aprox 150 billion usd for USa...tourism is hugely sided from NAFTA countries and a huge surplus. Watch millions of hotel workers and restaurant get broke. If you look at NAFTA, the day it ends, you see entire states with huge employment problems. There are statistics and they show, by states, how much is consumed by Mexico: clue, it ain't the wealthy states.

I think mist people are well intended, like you, but totally ignorant about what is going on. Keep your 700, and watch a world that turns back on the US. Obviously woth 6 backruptcies on his account and 2 divorces, Trump doesn't know how to keep good friends. I am sorry for him, but a little amused that many folks think this will help the average American, neither internally with the spike in racism, neither externally. Also, note China doesn't have a free trade agreement, and has 8 times the trade balance deficit, and has "stolen" hugely more jobs, but also the IP and the technics. There are almost not Mexican brands except for maybe bread or basics like cement. But there's a huge number for China.

Stay alert. Your children will depend on you being a little more vigilant and well informed

Re:Yay

[Pfhorrest]

You realize they said the same thing about Obama curbing Bush's then-decried use of Executive Orders, don't you?

The ACLU had this huge list of things that Obama could and should have done on day one, using Executive Orders, to reverse bad things that Bush had done before, and the Democrat narrative in response to that was "he can't do those things because Executive Orders are bad and Bush was bad to use them and we shouldn't use them or else the next Republican president will feel even more emboldened to use them". And then they went and used them anyway -- on things other than fixing the problems Bush caused -- and yeah, almost certainly emboldened Trump to use them even though he decries Obama's use of them every bit as much as Obama decried Bush's.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the $250 billion a year in products that Mexico buys of Made in USA work products? How many American people do you think will lose their jobs? 20 million? 17? I think it is ok to undo NAFTA. Just don't expect any net work to fly your way, and expect interest of american companies in thise countries to plumet, and even more layoff at all those. Also, if the US dollar weakens, US primary export -dollars- will also plumet. Good luck if that happens, because a huge part of a competitive America is having 0.5% interest rates vs the prohibitibe rates around most of the rest of the world.

Re:Yay

[Hylandr]

Go ahead and stick that system onto the chassis of an F-150.

Even if it's been massively scaled down. Batteries weigh more than Diesel by a large factor. Hauling requires a lot more juice than getting an aerodynamic frame to 100+ Mph.

Re:Yay

[Mashiki]

The same way London, Ontario lost two major manufacturing plants to Woodstock, Ontario. Sticks up their ass, humming and hawing, wanting special "handouts" to particular groups/organizations and so on. In Woodstock's, case it's how they ended up with 4 Toyota manufacturing plants, 3 Toyota Engineering plants, and a place called Sysco. Sysco manufactures processed food for hospitals/prisons/restaurants and so on. Or semi-processed(i.e. raw, but flavored requires cooking). It's the same bullshit that nearly cost Ingersoll, Ontario the CAMI manufacturing plant to Woodstock. Until the council there saw that it would really benefit them.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

A really big part of the good that will come out of a Trump presidency is that Congress will now clip the wings of the Executive Branch and widespread out-of-control Executive Orders will become a thing of the past.

Right. If you think that's going to happen, you're as naive and delusional as the liberals were when Obama took office.

Human nature trumps common sense (pun intended). The party in power will not give up the Executive Order privilege no matter how many times you visit Disney to "wish upon a star".

Re:Yay

[dunkelfalke]

Come on, typical European 40 ton semitrailers (TGA, Actros, Stralis) have 300 kW motors. That is very close to the Tesla S motor. There are already 18 ton electric delivery trucks out there. You seriously claim that a large car (and F-150 is exactly that) hauls more than that?

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

They compare Trump to Hitler because he's a xenophobic racist psychopath, not because of economic policy.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

First they came for...

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you want less immigrants right?

That's how immigration works, people flee poverty because risking their life crossing a border illegally is better than living a life of abject poverty.

So sure, there's now not going to be $1.6bn of investment in Mexican creating jobs and reasons for people to stay there, so there will be more migrants to the US instead.

These things don't work in isolation, every decision has an impact. You can't whine about one problem, whilst championing the sort of decision making that exacerbates it. No doubt you want Trump's wall as a solution, but then if Mexican has lost $1.6bn in investment regardless, then it sure as hell ain't going to be the one paying for it is it?

Sometimes the solutions to your problems have to be tackled outside of your own borders, difficult concept when you probably couldn't even point to Mexico on a map I know.

Re: Yay

[silentcoder]

When the GOP talks about not raising taxes they always silently add "on rich people". In fact they always give them tax CUTS.

They have never failed to raise taxes on ordinary people. Never. But then, they have never given a crap about ordinary people - the ordinary people are just the ladders they stand on to reach the corporate cock they suck on.

Re: Yay

[dougdonovan]

trump any ?'s

Re:Yay

[silentcoder]

There's just one small problem: Obama has used less executive orders than any other president in 40 years. Even now, in his final days, when presidents traditionally use a lot of them - passing things their base will like and forcing the other side to be the assholes that repeal it because their base don't like them.

Obama only really began using executive orders after 4 years of the most obstructionist congress in history. The guy REALLY tried to do things by working with congress, they refused to work with him. They took a vow to undermine him at every step and pursued that vow with such alacrity that some of their actions bordered on high treason (that letter to Iran almost certainly crossed the line actually). That was where Obama, finally, started using them as the only means to get ANYTHING done while in office.

What else did you expect when over a 4 year period the republicans would not cooperate on ANYTHING -even things they had been clamoring to do for DECADES were resisted if it was proposed by HIM.

Re:Yay

[jasmusic]

Correction: only the globalists can't keep their promises when they enter office, because the whole point of them entering office is to fuck you over! Give Trump at least the same builders' respect you give Linus Torvalds.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

An American company has no obligation to save the world by employing people outside the country.

An American company has no obligation to employ anyone.

The People should get returns on their investments. It's how democracy is supposed to work.

The owners should get the returns. You appear to be confusing democracy with communism.
--
roman_mir, mod'ed down by liberals again

Re: Yay

[dywolf]

plus ford is already replacing steel with aluminum in the F150 where it can

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[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. I've heard that Trump stiffed a lot of contractors and investors, in the process of "building" his small fortune. And what, trust the leopard to change his spots? Right.

Re:Yay

[dywolf]

I know its hard for you, but think it through: same way US cities do.
the jobs and investment were promised, probably in exchange various favors from the local city government to the Ford company.
they were probably counting on that investment and jobs, and been structuring local activities around it to be ready for it.
that now means lost time and effort on their part.

happens in the US all the time when a company backs out of a new plant before construction begins but after inking the deal with the new town.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The ordinary people got their blue collar jobs back.

What else do you want punk? Higher than minimum wage? Go look at your qualifications!

Want to sit in an office? Don't like to sweat? Fuck! You might as well ask for universal basic wage so you can go smoke your pot.

We deserve a tax CUT for sacrificing our profits to move the jobs. You get what you asked for so now for my part of the bargain.

Captcha: Satire

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[Anonymous Coward]

You know that Ancient Rome had a corrupt Senate that was easily influenced by bribes, right? The balance of power in the United States is a feature, not a bug.

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[T.E.D.]

A really big part of the good that will come out of a Trump presidency is that Congress will now clip the wings of the Executive Branch and widespread out-of-control Executive Orders will become a thing of the past.

And you are basing this on what empirical evidence exactly? The last two times we had one-party government, I don't believe either POTUS (one of each party) felt the need to veto a single bill. If you think this time it will be different, then why just yesterday did this new Congress rescind their very first attempt at legislation after a very mildly disapproving tweet from the PEOTUS?

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[mujadaddy]

Yes, "light truck" is in relation to full-sized rigs.

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[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like Mexico's problem.

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[Z80a]

And where is this explanation on the Clinton's campaign?

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[Anonymous Coward]

Obama only really began using executive orders after 4 years of the most obstructionist congress in history. The guy REALLY tried to do things by working with congress, they refused to work with him.

While I understand that it's easy to believe that, and that it's a fairly logical train of thought, the truth is that he had more executive orders during every year of his first term than he did in any year of his second term. To imply he didn't use them significantly until later in his presidency is simply untrue.

My expectation is that Trump will issue a significant number of executive orders this year. Why? Because he's an incoming president of a different party than the outgoing president, and that is how things happened for Obama (more issued in 2009 than any other year), G. W. Bush (more issued in 2001 than any other year), and Clinton (more issued in 1993 than any other year). While it wasn't true for G. H. W. Bush (his highest was year 3, 1991), he was following Reagan so he didn't have other party policies to overthrow. It was true for Reagan though (more issued in 1981 than other years).

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[Anonymous Coward]

Where were you when people were losing their jobs in the US?

Whining right here on /.

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[lsatenstein]

Go Trumperor!!!!!

Trump had nothing to do with the Ford decision. That decision was taken at least two to four years ago. Trump is BS'ing the population. Want a straight answer, Ford probably started on the electric car plant design overhaul in 2008. They need the Mexican plant to operate gasoline powered cars while they shut down the USA plant and retool. And then, the Mexican plant will retool, so that the Ford cars can be sold competitively in the world market. This export of Ford cars from the USA is not going to go far, as costs of living in the USA are too high.

You may not like it, but you need to have more socialized benefits, so that costs of living are lowered. Companies need to recognize that senior managers in major organizations cant expect million dollar a year bonus expectations. The company has to find ways to rein in costs if American goods are to be exported.

Sorry, I guess it is never going to happen.
 

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump will keep many highly profitable drugs illegal

Yeah, because Hillary was going to do something different?

While she clearly wasn't going to do full legalization, Clinton was at least going to maintain the Cole Memo and similar policies that have allowed states to make progress on the issue. Trump, on the other hand, is nominating a guy who has stated that good people don't use marijuana, and that his problem with the KKK is not the racism, but the weed. He is one of the biggest anti-pot dopes there is, and he's going to be in charge of national drug policy. That is a significant difference.

Re:Yay

[slashdotwannabe]

YouTube is your friend (unless you're an artist).

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[Raseri]

Mean words are literally the same as being responsible for tens of millions of deaths, as well as all of war's other attendant horrors, so it's an apt comparison.

Re:Yay

[guruevi]

If Congress sits on their hands and does nothing, whatever changes requested are considered to be a vote as 'no', that's how any parliamentary system works, it's not up to the President to just override the process whenever things are 'stuck'.

I agree with the executive orders when they execute what has already been passed by our lawmakers, however things like taking away large swaths of land from land owners and Indian reservations and placing them under federal "protection" is not authorized by any means and if it was, the authorization must have been really, really vague in wording.

Re:Yay

[micahraleigh]

If we're going to bring up the monolithic undeniability of NEEDS, I think I NEED to disregard anything you have to say.

Re:Yay

[micahraleigh]

I want to know what jobs Mexico is giving away for Americans.

Re:Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

*Fewer* executive orders. (Otherwise totally agree.)

Re:Yay

[Darinbob]

What land has been taken away from private owners without going through eminent domain process? The recent national monuments was a change in status of public land, not private land.

Re:Yay

[silentcoder]

Small correction: fewer than any president in closer to a hundred years (it may be more but I haven't looked further back). FDR holds the record (but as the longest serving president ever that should be seen in context), and every president since him has issued significantly more EO's than Obama has.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget that Indian reservations already are under federal protection, that is to say, the federal government holds title to them in trust for the tribes and administers them through the BIA.

Re: Yay

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama didn't "militarize" the police. Police spending, outside of the FBI and other federal agencies, is the exclusive domain of state governments and their sub agencies. If you have a local police force that is overmilitarized, it is your own fault for not voting in state and local elections.

The federal government's role in all this is that it sold off surplus military equipment following the U.S. withdrawal from its mideast conflicts at low prices. But this has been part for the course in every major conflict the U.S. participated in during the 20th century. It was the chuckle heads raised on Counter Strike working in the departments who saw all the "sweet gear" available and decided to live out the fevered childhood dreams of blowing away bad guys they fostered with years of gaming in mom's basement, all the while egged on by categorically false news narratives of increasingly violent streeta.

In fact, the limitations put in place by the Obama administration on selling tactical gear to state and local PDs were really the first of their kind, since up until then, forces weren't actively seeking out tanks and machine guns.

Winning

[Anonymous Coward]

Another win for The Donald

Re:Winning

[unixisc]

Pleeeeeze, Mr President, I can't stand any more winning, all this winning, I'd like to take a break from all this winning.....

TRUMP RUELZ!

[Anonymous Coward]

King Trump!

Long live the Republican Party!

Icahn eats little people like YOU!

God loves only the winners!

LOSERS!

Re: TRUMP RUELZ!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama's anti-American legacy already unraveling.

Trump is the true Hope president!

MAGA!!

Re: TRUMP RUELZ!

[skids]

Aren't you guys supposed to be experiencing cognitive dissonance over your loyalties to fossil fuels about now?

Re: TRUMP RUELZ!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever stop to think that the meme of "everyone on the right hates X, Y and Z" is nothing more than...a meme?

I love electric cars and I have no god. Have your heads exploded yet?

Re: TRUMP RUELZ!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama brought us to the brink of a mass extinction. Don't forget, Trump is not president yet but Obama has been for nearly 8 years!

Climate change, maxed out public debt, income gap, gun violence, cop violence, etc, that's all OBAMA!

People want jobs!

Re: TRUMP RUELZ!

[Darinbob]

But how does Trump get jobs? I can't personally beg each company to do this, although so far that seems to be his only plan. We're all waiting until his first day in office when he finally reveals his secret plans he was talking about during his campaign.

Re: TRUMP RUELZ!

[dehachel12]

>Climate change, maxed out public debt, income gap, gun violence, cop violence, etc, that's all OBAMA!
and nothing to do with republicans control of house ?

Truth of the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody knows Ford sucks. Hard. They haven't won a NASCAR championship in years.

Nobody wanted to buy a Ford, nobody wants to invest in a useless factory to make crap that won't sell, whether in Mexico or anywhere else.

They should just let Apple buy them out.

Re:Truth of the story.

[tsqr]

Nobody wanted to buy a Ford

Except the people who buy cars, I guess. Ford's US market share (14.5%) in 2015 trailed GM, tied Toyota for second place, and beat Honda and Nissan handily.

Re:Truth of the story.

[bobbied]

Everybody knows Ford sucks. Hard. They haven't won a NASCAR championship in years.

Perhaps that NASCAR thing matters to some, but my '16 F150 is a sweet ride that gets me comfortably back and forth to work and gets 20 MPG city and 25 MPG highway... I'm not so sure Ford sucks all that hard in that user space...

Now how Ford fares with the muscle car crowd is beyond me, as my midlife crisis is behind me at this point.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Princeofcups]

Perhaps that NASCAR thing matters to some, but my '16 F150 is a sweet ride that gets me comfortably back and forth to work and gets 20 MPG city and 25 MPG highway... I'm not so sure Ford sucks all that hard in that user space...

Of course it's a "sweet ride" if it's brand new. Give it 3 or 4 months to start falling apart.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Waffle Iron]

Everybody knows Ford sucks. Hard. They haven't won a NASCAR championship in years.

Is there even a single part on a modern NASCAR car that has any relation at all to an actual production vehicle?

I think that argument is kind of like "Law degrees from Yale suck: Their football record was only 3-7 this year."

Re:Truth of the story.

[istartedi]

Maybe you're making the same mistake I did. Ford has come a long way, and the Japanese have slacked off. I bought a Honda and have had some real issues. My transmission seal leaked. At least that was under warranty. The visor is a hassle I had to fix with duct tape, and has been the subject of a class action lawsuit. My motor mount failed, and there is a bogus aftermarket part I got that didn't work. I have to go back for a real Honda mount that should give me another 100k; but I've never had any other car where the motor mount was an issue. Heck, I even had a 70s Ford (from the bad old days of Ford) and the motor mount was just fine after 30 years.

Meanwhile, I knew somebody who had 300k miles on their Explorer, with no real issues.

Yes, the plural of anecdote is not data; but I think there's a broad consensus that Ford has caught up in quality.

Re:Truth of the story.

[bobbied]

I've had it since April 2016, so I guess I'm doing good at 8 months and you are wrong. Here's hoping you continue to be wrong...

My last Ford (a 2000 Expedition) did 12 years and 120K miles with out too much trouble... At least until it was totaled by a VW Bug that hit it in exactly the wrong place and broke the lower front suspension and bent up enough stuff to make it uneconomical to repair given it's value...

But that was 16 years ago and Ford has had serous financial issues since... But hey, you pay your money and take your chances these days, especially with cars and trucks.

Re:Truth of the story.

[HornWumpus]

I bet that motor mount was not fine after 30 years, but you didn't notice or care.

Your Honda story has a subtext. You bought a six banger Honda, never do that. They make great 4s, but their 6s _suck_ big wet donkey balls.

The motor mount on a Honda 6 is active. When the six shuts down three cylinders it shakes terribly. To make it workable the mount stiffens. This is also why those mounts are so unreasonably fucking expensive.

Bottom line, never buy a Honda/Acura with anything other than a four banger. They suck.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

they all have 4 wheels!

Re:Truth of the story.

[h33t l4x0r]

You're forgetting that this is "Too big to fail" Ford we're talking about. This announcement is like a welfare mother announcing she's about to buy a 4K TV.

Re:Truth of the story.

[istartedi]

Huh? What makes you think I bought a six? It's a 4-cylinder Civic. Reading around on the Honda forums, I know I'm not the only one with the problem. The mechanic told me the mount is gel, but I don't think it's active.

Re:Truth of the story.

[LynnwoodRooster]

I put 230K miles on my 1999 Ranger, and it's now logged another 100K down in Guatemala... I sold it do a guy who took it down there to use for construction (rather, I traded him the truck for painting the interior of my home). It's still going strong. Only things changed so far was the oil, brake pads, spark plugs, air filter, and radio (swapped out the factory AM-only radio for a CD player). Still working with the original clutch!

Re:Truth of the story.

[LynnwoodRooster]

I thought Ford was the only one who didn't take a bailout? GM and Chrysler got billions shoveled at them, but Ford didn't take any of the 2008 money...

Re:Truth of the story.

[HornWumpus]

Sorry, apparent new problem. Honda's six bangers have been bad this way for a solid decade+.

Re:Truth of the story.

[HornWumpus]

On the upside, hopefully the mounts aren't $300+

Re:Truth of the story.

[Aighearach]

My Nissan was assembled in the USA by Ford, they did a great job too.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Cmdln Daco]

Of course it's a "sweet ride" if it's brand new. Give it 3 or 4 months to start falling apart.

My Ford Ranger is a 2006, and it has 190K miles. It's been a durable and reliable ride since I bought it new ten years ago.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Darinbob]

What about world market share?

Re:Truth of the story.

[Darinbob]

I dunno, that sounds like sucky mileage. Maybe a lighter truck would do better for commuting.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Bryan Ischo]

Maybe I need to change my opinion about American cars. I came of age in the 80's when Japanese cars were so much superior to American cars that it wasn't even funny. And so I've carried this prejudice against American cars for 30 years now.

I bought my first new car this year and I made a point to buy only a Japanese car made in Japan. I didn't even want it to be assembled in the USA. It's a 2016 Subaru Impreza. The 2017 model year moved assembly to the USA so I squeaked in just in time.

But I'm not entirely certain that this Subaru's manufacture quality is really better than the equivalent Ford really. I've seen new Fords and they look nice. And some of the smaller Ford hatchbacks actually look like very good value for the money when compared to my Subaru.

I just can't shake the feeling that American = bad engineering, poor manufacturing, and bad assembly. I need to work on it. Maybe if every crappy economy rental car weren't a low quality piece of junk Chevy/Ford I might be able to forcefully shift my point of view.

One thing is true though -- lots of American cars, especially low cost SUVs, come with ridiculously ugly interiors. The buttons and switches look like they are made for Flintstones cars.

Re: Truth of the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps that NASCAR thing matters to some, but my '16 F150 is a sweet ride that gets me comfortably back and forth to work and gets 20 MPG city and 25 MPG highway... I'm not so sure Ford sucks all that hard in that user space...

This would be a better argument if Ford was planning to use that factory to make those overpriced and underperforming trucks. They aren't, and I give good odds you are wasting any purpose that truck might have had. Which will likely be good, since it would collapse if you tried to use it for real work.

Now how Ford fares with the muscle car crowd is beyond me, as my midlife crisis is behind me at this point.

Now you're just driving a truck to make yourself feel more authentic. Huh.

Re: Truth of the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the people who buy cars, I guess.

You're confusing doing something with wanting to do it. Check the satisfaction numbers.

Be astounded that the company is still in business.

Re: Truth of the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Aweful. My wofe has a CX-9 and the break diafragm stopped working and we almost died (recall was issued right after). The differential broke and had to replaced. And the bearings had problems that the tire could detach from the car (recalled). A HUGE HAZARD and a HUGE let down when I foubd out these cars where made by Ford.

Re:Truth of the story.

[adolf]

Badging.

And apparently it works, or you wouldn't have had a comment to reply to.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Xest]

Most racing endeavours, be it NASCAR or Formula 1 act as R&D programmes for car manufacturers - they turn it into a competition with massive coverage because it's makes these R&D programmes self funding. So yes, if you're winning NASCAR then it means you're leading R&D and that technology will feed into your next generation of cars. If a particular company hasn't done well in these events in some time then it's evidence that their R&D is falling behind and that they're becoming less competitive.

Most of the technologies relating to handling, stability, performance, design, and safety in modern consumer cars come from lessons learnt on the race track.

This is in large part why your consumer vehicle doesn't still break up and set on fire when you push it over 40mph and why crashes at 60mph are no longer guaranteed to be fatal.

Re: Truth of the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Was your keyboard also made by Ford?

Re:Truth of the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nissan actually produces about half a million more vehicles than Ford in the US.

That's right, Ford is so bad, they have to produce cars for another company for them to sell.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Waffle Iron]

I'm sure that very little of the R&D that goes into contemporary NACAR racing has any relevance to production vehicles. For example, until very recently, the power train engineering was all about getting performance out of a carburetted pushrod V8 sucking air through artificially small holes. What has that got to do with today's real world? Likewise, safety is based on tightly strapping the driver into the very center of a birdcage frame. Once again, completely irrelevant to highway situations.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Ford was the only one who didn't take a bailout? GM and Chrysler got billions shoveled at them, but Ford didn't take any of the 2008 money...

Ford tried to make a commercial on that. It was their pointlessly hypocritical appeal to American pride. Truth was more complicated.

But go ahead, stroke your piston, and think the bowtie brigade was a bunch of winners.

They ended that campaign early. It was just needless antagonism leading people to point out their deceit.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Xest]

You're taking very specific examples and suggesting there must be nothing of relevance at all, which is a blatant fallacy. You're simply trying to convince yourself you're right, when in fact you're completely wrong.

Pretty much the entire field of aerodynamic modelling of cars, pretty much the entirety of material science related to cars starts with things like Formula 1 and NASCAR and gets us where we are now - with ever more fuel efficient cars, due to using lighter materials, and due to being more aerodynamic and so on and so forth. I don't know why you also think the design of a birdcage frame is irrelevant to highway situations, understanding of crumple zones and so on and so forth is in itself an example of something that was driven by the need to protect drivers when racing cars.

As cars go faster and faster, and need to be more and more fuel efficient, learning about everything from heat dissipation, to wait minimisation, to energy conservation is always being led by racing because they're at that forefront of trying to win the race. Typically the transformation follows a clear pattern - technological advancements turn up in something like a Formula 1, or NASCAR vehicle first, then they end up in high end sports cars quite quickly, from there they move into common consumer vehicles.

For example, the fact most modern cars don't really rust much, if at all is precisely because they use more plastics, more composite materials and so on and so forth that simply aren't effected by rust because they're also lighter. These materials and use of them in motor vehicles stems from the need to get race cars faster by carrying less weight, this is a prime example of the sort of technology transfer that started out in racing, and moved to high end sports cars, and is now in just about every car you'll find in a car lot that was made in the last 10 years.

Even if a consumer car doesn't need to go as fast as many race cars, it can still typically gain efficiency instead of speed from those technologies, because more fuel equals more weight, which means you need a more powerful engine which will typically be heavier also meaning you get stuck in a loop of competing problems, unless you improve fuel efficiency. This is no different to the problem with consumer cars, only people don't want to max out at 200mph, they do at least want to go further on less fuel.

But you don't have to take my word that you're wrong, there's more than enough written on the topic from independent sources if you're willing to do a simple search. Here are some examples:

http://www.engineering.com/Lib...

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/...

Re:Truth of the story.

[istartedi]

They are, if you include labor. Here's a vid of the labor involved if you're curious. I decided that this is not a DIY project for me. Note--that guy installs an afermarket mount. Hopefully he had better luck than I did.

Re:Truth of the story.

[istartedi]

No biggy. This kind of cycles back to what I was saying too--we build up our impressions of car companies, and they can fall out of date sometimes. The one thing that I was a bit wary of on the car was the automatic transmission. I was told a long time ago that Japanese automatics don't work well. Aside from the seal under warranty it hasn't been a problem. Mileage is somewhere in the 120s now.

Re:Truth of the story.

[Waffle Iron]

About the only NASCAR related things I saw there, other than the outdated pushrod V8s I already mentioned, were some oil filters. The remaining technologies were either from less reactionary racing organizations that allow car designs that aren't still pinned to production cars from 40 years ago, or they were broad technology categories that happened many decades ago. (Plastic-bodied cars have been on the market for at least six decades now.)

So, getting back to the original post, Ford cars must suck because their oil filters aren't good enough to win NASCAR races.

Re:Truth of the story.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Your own links show you to be wrong. Ford asked for a line of credit - but never used it. It got loans in 2009 - but that's different than the block grants of Chrysler, and outright purchase and restructure of GM. Loans get paid back - the Government lost billions on GM (and GM's secured investors - bond holders - were screwed by the Obama Administration).

Re:Truth of the story.

[Xest]

Okay if you want to keep being wrong just to convince yourself that you're right about every word you speak even if you have no idea what you're talking about then fine, have it your way. An odd stance to take when given evidence and the opportunity to find plenty more evidence (Google), but hey.

The fact is, Ford is behind the curve, maybe you have one, and that upsets you, but trying to deny reality just because of something as petty as that is, well, pretty much the definition of ignorance.

It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[Anonymous Coward]

Fifty two American diplomats and citizens held hostage for 444 in Iran during the Carter Administration were suddenly released without explanation. It was as if the hostage takers are all frightened of what Reagan would do. Here, you have American companies opening factories left and right outside of the U.S. throughout the Obama Administration, and suddenly Trump comes in and they're all pulling back.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[toadlife]

It was as if the hostage takers are all frightened of what Reagan would do

To the contrary, they knew exactly what Reagan would do. They made a back room deal with Iran during the election - an act of Treason by the gipper.

Reagan should have died of his dementia in federal prison.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely explanation from Wikipedia:

The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, the day President Carter's term ended. While Carter had an "obsession" with finishing the matter before stepping down, the hostage-takers are thought to have wanted the release delayed as punishment for his perceived support for the Shah.

The negotiations had been underway for a long time so this makes sense.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[ClickOnThis]

It was as if the hostage takers are all frightened of what Reagan would do

To the contrary, they knew exactly what Reagan would do. They made a back room deal with Iran during the election - an act of Treason by the gipper.

Reagan should have died of his dementia in federal prison.

The Iran-Contra Affair may have been a violation of US law, but it was not treason because the US was not at war with Iran at the time.

In any case, Reagan played dumb about the whole thing.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[Anonymous Coward]

> They made a back room deal with Iran during the election

No they didn't. It's amazing that people are still spreading this ancient fake news 37 years later.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[toadlife]

Reagan's entire legacy is fake news.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[ClickOnThis]

Gaah, whoops, the Iran hostage crisis was not the Iran-Contra affair. The former ended before Reagan took office. And conspiracy theories about a backroom deal orchestrated by Reagan are just that.

But my point stands that no treason was committed in either case.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[ClickOnThis]

I'm no fan of Reagan, but I respect him and Gorbachev for sitting down together and ending the Cold War. And that is not fake news.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[Cmdln Daco]

Hillary wanted to reignite the Cold War with Russia. Over a energy pipeline in Syria that we're not allowed to mention here in the U.S.

She was hoping, it seems, to become the Lyndon Johnson of the 21st Century.

So sad, too bad.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[Anonymous Coward]

Reagan said "I can't recall."

To me the question wasn't whether he should have been impeached or not, it was for which reason:
1.) Incompetence - Honestly can't recall something so important? Not fit for duty as President.
2.) Lying under oath - Fail to honor your oath, your obligation to Congress and your duty to the People? Not fit for duty as President.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time Congress has actually declared war was World War II. Vietnam was authorized by congress and Korea was authorized by the UN and funded by Congress. We haven't been 'at war' with anyone for a very long time. Funny how often the word is used for political gain in the press but suddenly the definition changes to suit different needs when siting in front of Congress. The word itself has become a weapon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason#United_States

Ask any veteran of Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq or any other 'smaller scuffle' (Grenada, Panama, Bosnia, Somalia, etc.,...) if they think the terms make any difference. This is why words are important - throwing them around for intended political effect when they have conflicting legal definitions can and is a big problem.

Re:It's a bit like when Reagan took office

[Darinbob]

It's much more reasonable to assume that Iran didn't want to release hostages while Carter was president. New regime gives them an excuse to release hostages without feeling like they acquiesced to international pressure.

Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

While this is ultimately an economic decision (small car sales are waaaay down and Ford doesn't need another factory), I can't imagine the threat of tariffs didn't factor into the decision to cancel the Mexican factory. Nevertheless, it's amazing how the online comments sections are taking a black vs.white/pro vs. anti-Trump side to a nuanced subject.

Ultimately, this is good news for Michigan workers, whether or not we bring politics into the discussion.

Re:Good, but...

[bobbied]

The question of if Trump deserves the victory lap or not is really moot... What matters is how the voters/workers in Michigan and elsewhere perceive this move by Ford...If THEY think Trump is responsible, then that's all that matters. Give Trump his due, he's at least TRYING to market himself using these accomplishments.

Besides, all the political posturing is not new... What IS new though is a Republican (even if in name only) is taking credit for something largely seen as a good thing for labor... After all, we've been beguiled with tall tales of Obama's accomplishments for 8 years where he's taken credit for things he wasn't responsible for (and a few things he actively took actions to oppose.)

Re:Good, but...

[haruchai]

While this is ultimately an economic decision (small car sales are waaaay down and Ford doesn't need another factory), I can't imagine the threat of tariffs didn't factor into the decision to cancel the Mexican factory. Nevertheless, it's amazing how the online comments sections are taking a black vs.white/pro vs. anti-Trump side to a nuanced subject.

Ultimately, this is good news for Michigan workers, whether or not we bring politics into the discussion.

Politics has long been a part of every economic discussion, especially where foreign vs domestic jobs are concerned.
But Obama did a lot more for the auto industry & Michigan, but it'll make scant difference to his legacy.

Re:Good, but...

[pr0fessor]

ultimately they are Michigan workers and even Americans but I'm going say to the 700 new jobs probably won't benefit they entire state just the little town of flat rock and maybe a few surrounding communities.

Re:Good, but...

[Archangel Michael]

It isn't nuanced once it becomes a pattern.

Re:Good, but...

[Etcetera]

Besides, all the political posturing is not new... What IS new though is a Republican (even if in name only) is taking credit for something largely seen as a good thing for labor...

Mod parent up. Wish I had them of my own.

Re:Good, but...

[Dan East]

Obama propped up the status quo in the American auto industry. Whether or not that was a good thing is debatable. Only Ford was healthy enough and managed well enough to not require any government bail outs. The industry did not have an opportunity to self-correct or those brands be sold and taken over by more competent management (no one bailed Hostess out when they failed, and guess what? I can still buy Hostess Twinkies the same as ever.) The fact that Ford is looking firmly into the future of both energy (electric) and transportation in general (Uber and self-driving cars) is a reflection of the leadership that kept them healthy and solvent since their inception.

Re:Good, but...

[Major Blud]

But Obama did a lot more for the auto industry & Michigan, but it'll make scant difference to his legacy.

Maybe, but I'm not sure if any of it would have happened if it weren't for this guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Michigan voter here - We voted for Trump already. Hillary called us deplorable. She should have been her talking about the auto bailouts.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, whatever you are personally, you sure prove your comprehension skills of what Hillary actually said are pretty deplorable.

Re:Good, but...

[haruchai]

"Only Ford was healthy enough and managed well enough to not require any government bail outs"
It's been a long time since Ford could make everything they needed for their cars.
Despite their relatively healthy status compared to the other automakers, they supported the call for the industry to be saved since the collapse of the competition would have devastated their own supply chain.
So one way or another, they too got a bailout and would have been devastated without one.
Ford also accepted $6 billion in super-low interest loans for plant retooling of which they have yet to pay any back.
They also borrowed almost $24 billion but most of that has been repaid. I guarantee that neither you nor I could get the kinds of interest rates they received.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did she? IIRC, she said "Trump and his basket of deplorables". She did not call YOU deplorable. She doesn't even know you.. That racist David Duke? Yes, deplorable, most of us can agree. That racist Reince Priebus? Yes, deplorable, most of us can agree. Both of those people were Trump supporters, and can reasonably be included as part of a "basket of deplorables" with the fewest of feathers being ruffled. YOU? None of us know you personally, and I doubt Clinton knows you, either. YOU SELF-SELECTED WHEN THE WORD DEPLORABLE WAS MENTIONED CONCERNING THE CANDIDATE THAT YOU SEEM TO PREFER. There are many deplorable assholes in Trump's group. That you include yourself as one of them shows the world what you think of yourself.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The CEOs are figuring out the game. Trump is all about PR. They've got to give lip service to keeping American jobs, even if what they're doing is completely different. They need to give Trump a chance to claim a victory, so even if the union President points out the deal wasn't so great (like what happened in the Carrier case) Trump will just log onto Twitter and say that the union guy is a loser, and he'll get his 40K likes (probably half of those from Russian hackers, but hey).

Re: Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice clownworld logic

Re:Good, but...

[Darinbob]

Trump really isn't a Republican though.

Re:Good, but...

[Darinbob]

Ford received a $9 billion line of credit from the government which it used to upgrade plants to make electric and hybrid vehicles. So while that's not directly a bail out it was given at the same time as the other bail outs.

Re: Good, but...

[Bryan Ischo]

His/her logic is sound. Read it again.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have just let you assholes go bankrupt if you were going to vote for an ill-informed, petulant racist...

When your union is disbanded and your pay and benefits evaporate, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the suffering you brought upon yourself.

Re: Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what matters is exactly the opposite, relealing the truth. Remember we are borrowing our children future and must make good decisions.

Re: Good, but...

[Mashiki]

Yeah, it sure worked out for Iggy when he was trying to run as the PM of Canada too. He sure put Harper in his place..right?

Re:Good, but...

[swb]

Maybe I'm giving the captains of industry too much credit, but is there some chance that they have done their own reading of the tea leaves and come to the conclusion that some kind of change is afoot politically, socially and maybe even economically that might cause them to re-prioritize investments, even if it doesn't mean abandoning globalization as usual?

For better or worse, Trump bested the political establishment at their own game and did it without even playing by their rules or spending much money while simultaneously being exposed as crude and simple. That might mean that broader change is afoot that should be paid attention to in terms of business priorities.

Re:Good, but...

[dwpro]

She said 'half' are deplorable (and are furthermore irredeemable.)  You don't get to call out the edge cases as being representative when 50% are included. Op might well have flipped a coin and decided based on that.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary voters sure are lovely people.

Haven't you fools figured out yet that calling everyone who disagrees with you a racist/sexist/homophobe doesn't worth any longer?

Trump was right. The trade agreements signed by the US benefited ONLY the super-rich. Your average person only got pummelled by them. Jobs moved abroad and the money flowed to the rich establishment. Entire communities were hollowed out to benefit a few massively wealthy people - who ALSO avoided paying any tax.

In a developed nation:

10% - benefited
10% - believed the lie and thought they were benefiting (they weren't)
10% - believed they would benefit one day
70% - lost out massively

Arguably developing nations suddenly found themselves with work and benefited - until they themselves became too expensive and the locusts moved on to the next region to pillage.

Nevertheless, the era of globalisation is over. As is the "diversity" charade being used to replace the population of western nations through mass uncontrolled migration.

Re:Good, but...

[meta-monkey]

I've read before that the multiplying effect of a factory job is between 4x and 8x. So for every factory job you create, you also create jobs at diners and clothing stores for the workers, transportation companies to move materials to and from the factories, etc. Do that enough and you have a state's economy.

Re:Good, but...

[meta-monkey]

What matters is how the voters/workers in Michigan and elsewhere perceive this move by Ford...If THEY think Trump is responsible, then that's all that matters.

I'm not even sure it matters whether or not they think Trump did it. What will matter in 2020 is whether or not they have a job and feel more secure then than they did in 2016.

The democrats were running around touting "5% unemployment" and "job creation" during the election, but we all know the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers are phoney. Be engineer. Become unemployed, count on the unemployment roles. Quit looking for work and you are no longer "unemployed." Or get job at McDonald's, you are no longer an "unemployed engineer" you are a gainfully employed hospitality worker. People don't vote based on how they perceive the greater economy, they vote based on how they know their own economy. So you've got millions of people saying "fuck your numbers, I ain't got a job and nobody I know's got a job."

If in 2020 lots of people who were unhappy with their employment status in 2016 are still unhappy with their employment status, Trump will lose reelection. I suspect, though, that many people will be better off, and they will reelect Trump. The dems will run around saying "no, no, things are actually bad now, and anything good had nothing to do with Trump!" And no one will care because if shit ain't broke you don't fix it.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

How do Trump supporters so quickly forget that Republicans absolutely love free trade? Just recently John Thune was espousing it as one of three mechanisms to help the farming community deal with low grain prices (by opening up new market opportunities world wide.)

Re:Good, but...

[bobbied]

Sort of like Reagan wasn't... He won the republican primary by the way....

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So now you all socalists ? Bucking the will of the market to pay for welfare programs to keep over priced jobs in your town.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Trump started his campaign by spreading racist lies about President Obama's birth certificate.

He has engaged in racist attacks on a judge who oversaw his case.

Now you want me to pretend that I didn't notice your vote in support of a blatant, proud racist?

Get bent. I couldn't care less what you think of me. It's not the racists and racist sympathizers who handed this election to Donald Trump. The republican party has always had strong support among the nation's racists.

The GOP continues to oppose civil rights at all levels of government, recently gutting the Voting Rights Act.

The people who gave this election to Donald Trump are the folks who know racism, and evil when they see it, but don't bother voting.

I've got no beef with Donald Trump's racist base... They will never change, until they mercifully die of old age.

The problem is the Democratic party's indifferent apathetic base of support who couldn't even bother to vote against Orange Hitler, or who voted for Jill Stein, which supported Trump's victory as well.

But anyway, the liberals who couldn't be bothered to vote will lose their health insurance soon, and the union members who like the KKK and neo-Nazi groups supported Donald Trump will lose their union soon.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you double-down by calling GP deplorable. Nice.

Re:Good, but...

[micahraleigh]

You are the one injecting politics.

When Andrew Jackson kills a bunch of Native Americans, it's just "corrupt politicians" doing bad things. Never mind the D next to his name. Or the D next to Spitzers name or the D next to Al Gore's name or the D next to Edwards name or D's next to the people who turned up dead after WikiLeaks. If the economy started improving a couple years ago (i.e. more than the pathetic 2% growth its been maxing at), would you be saying, "Oh, yeah, it doesn't matter who gets the credit..." I highly doubt that. The media is careful to make sure everyone knows Nixon was a Republican but not Reagan (who was voted best president of the centure in 2000 btw).

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Politics aside, if you voted for Trump you are deplorable. No matter how you justify it Trump is deplorable, says and (presumably) believes deplorable things and is now beginning to do deplorable things. You, by voting for him, supported these things and therefore YOU ARE DEPLORABLE. I'm sorry that bothers you. I'm sorry you don't like being called out on it but the facts are what they are.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump supporters haven't forgotten anything.

The Republicans and Democrats are two wings of the same establishment party.

Trump went to war with and gutted the Republican party, in case you haven't noticed.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hillary's campaign started the birth certificate stuff about Obama in 2008.

"Get bent. I couldn't care less what you think of me."

We know. You're a sociopath, just like the rest of your pals. The difference now is that the only tactic you know, screaming "raciss!" at people and doubling down, doesn't work any longer.

Get ready for a good old fashioned ass-fucking over the next few years.

Re:Good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm glad you don't.

Finally Ford see the future.

[Higaran]

I've alway been a fan of ford, but they have been dragging ass for a long time, only just barely innovating for the last few years. I'm glad they finally realize that they are going to need to really start pulling more into electric and hybrids. I think the biggest thing pushing them is actually emissions. From my understanding it's impossible for a big V8 to pass the new emissions regulations that will be even more stringent next few years.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[JoeMerchant]

...From my understanding it's impossible for a big V8 to pass the new emissions regulations that will be even more stringent next few years.

1978 called, they want your comment back.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Barely innovating? The fastest production Ford for 2016 was a Ford Focus.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Higaran]

Current ford v8's already do not pass most of the emissions standards, but are legal to sell because Ford as a manufacturer has certain limit they can go on various areas, so they still have a small number of them. Going forward the new limits specifically say how much soot and other various chemicals are allowed, and the v8's can not pass. The only thing I can think of is if they did something similar to the diesel engines where they have a particulate filter that gets burned out on a regular basis, but I don't see that make sense for cars.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[bobbied]

I think you are correct.. I think this is a result of the CAFE standards more than anything else. Electric Vehicles are not viable in the USA where distances are huge, even for urban dwellers. Where the average daily commute exceeds the EV's battery's ability to keep the wheels turning.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this sarcasm? If it is, my detector might be broken.

Ford has electric and hybrid (including one of the better ones) cars on the market, has been downsizing and turbocharging their engines (with 3, 4 and 6-cylinder EcoBoosts), and using lightweight materials (aluminum bodies in the F-series). Perhaps you were thinking about FCA or General Motors?

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[JoeMerchant]

Current ford v8's already do not pass most of the emissions standards, but are legal to sell because Ford as a manufacturer has certain limit they can go on various areas, so they still have a small number of them. Going forward the new limits specifically say how much soot and other various chemicals are allowed, and the v8's can not pass. The only thing I can think of is if they did something similar to the diesel engines where they have a particulate filter that gets burned out on a regular basis, but I don't see that make sense for cars.

The situation was essentially the same in 1978, and a combination of advancing technology and refinements of the requirements led to the resurgence of the muscle car in the late 1990s.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[boskone]

yes, and light trucks don't get much better mileage than in 1978 either.

the massive benefits of modern fuel injection, FADEC and other enhancements have mostly been squandered on more weight (heavier vehicles, partially for "safety") and to work through the catalytic.

very, very recently (ecoboost) and a few others have brought some marked improvement, but it feels like a fraction of what we should have had. I could get 20 MPG in my 79 scout with a v8, carbeurator and "barely" electronic ignition.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Emissions regulations are insane. Do you remember the compact pickups like the little Ford Ranger? Great gas mileage. But, according to the emissions algorithm, not good enough. According to their math driving a giant extended cab supertruck is better for the planet than driving a compact. Auto makers literally can't afford to make small, lightweight pickups that use gasoline engines.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[dgatwood]

Where in the world is the average commute more than a 200-mile round trip? Oh, by EV, you meant those low-range pseudo-EVs that the major car companies keep building as a means of convincing federal and state governments that nobody really wants an EV so that they won't have to get serious about them....

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[MightyMartian]

The problem was the idiotic regulations which essentially gave large trucks a huge break. And it sucks to. I have no desire for DodgeFordGMToyota RamFuckerTacomarado 8 cylinder megatruck that can apparently pull D10 cats up the sides of glaciers, and would love to buy another small truck like the old 1992 Mazda B2200 I owned, which was good enough to throw a few sheets of plywood into, but could drive around for two weeks or more on a single tank of gas.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can drive around for a couple of weeks on a single tank...now it is a 44 gallon tank but at least I only have to fill occasionally.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've alway been a fan of ford, but they have been dragging ass for a long time,...

I love to hate contradictory statements.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[bobbied]

No..

Face it, the 200 miles they quote is the absolute IDEAL situation with the environmental controls turned off and the battery in factory new condition. ACTUAL mileage in practice is pretty far south of that, much like MPG ratings on window stickers don't reflect YOUR actual mileage.

I know a guy that has an EV in his garage. His round trip commute is less than 120 miles a day. His EV stays home for his wife to use around town running the kids to school, mainly because the distance doesn't leave enough margin for him to make ANY detours or run errands and there are no charging options here at work. His commute is not excessively large for the area, yet his EV doesn't have the range to make it comfortably.

I dare say this is more the rule than the exception until we can get EV's which test to ranges approaching 300 miles which will be practical to about half that. Plus their initial costs need to approach that of a similar sized conventional car with an positive ROI which breaks even within a year or so. With gasoline prices so low and EV's so darned expensive to make, it's no wonder why they are stuck on dealer's lots forever..

Re: Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then buy one??? If you want new there are many small new trucks from Chevy, Toyota, ford, etc.. Or were you just wanting to bitch because someone has different needs and therefore prefers a different vehicle?

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[JoeMerchant]

I read a recent Mazda press release about how they "ecofying" their new engines making them more efficient and cleaner: 4 into 1 scavenging exhausts, variable geometry intakes (the modern version of a 4 barrel carb), hemispherical piston heads... I forget what all they listed, but every single thing was stuff that was known, and practiced in the 1960s by anybody who cared. Basically, they're saying that they're not turning out bottom-dollar cast iron turds anymore, they're starting to do the things that have been known to benefit performance (aka efficiency) for 50+ years.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[serviscope_minor]

but could drive around for two weeks or more on a single tank of gas.

communist.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

20mpg in a 70s v8 on a rolling multi-ton brick? LMFAO

Moreover, EPA mpg measurement changed in '08 to better reflect modern driving conditions (e.g. highway speeds of ~80 instead of ~50). This makes modern vehicles look less efficient compared to older vehicles, though makes it more realistic for purchasers. There's a reason the EPA mileage starting being a joke, because until '08 it didn't reflect the (modern) real world driver experience even remotely.

Could a 79 scout even go 80mph?

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

much like MPG ratings on window stickers don't reflect YOUR actual mileage.

You must drive an automatic. On my last car, I never got as low an mpg rating as what was on the sticker. It was supposed to be about 31 mpg, but I got around 39... got really close but never quite cracked 40 mpg.

Re: Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there aren't. The "mid size" trucks today are bigger than the full size trucks were 20 years ago.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[HornWumpus]

Learn to drive pussyfoot. The pedal on the right is there for a reason.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only reason car companies make electric is to keep fleet average down. People are fools to think that electric is the wave of the future. The only thing driving sales and keeping the auto industry floating right now is SUV and truck sales. That's where the money is at and it's what consumers want period.

Re: Finally Ford see the future.

[Nidi62]

The new Toyota Tacomas are the same size as my 4 door full cab 2006 Toyota Tundra was. The new midsized pickups are old full size, these new full size pickups are damn near tractor trailer rigs.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Cmdln Daco]

and using lightweight materials (aluminum bodies in the F-series).

Ford even has had one of their competitors advertising the message:

"If you are enough of a dumbfuck to dump a load of cement block into the bed of your truck from a height, you're probably dumb enough to buy a Chevy."

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Cmdln Daco]

would love to buy another small truck like the old 1992 Mazda B2200 I owned, which was good enough to throw a few sheets of plywood into, but could drive around for two weeks or more on a single tank of gas.

Ford is about to reintroduce a new Ford Ranger into the US market. It's coming soon.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[93 Escort Wagon]

I've alway been a fan of ford ...

Me too!

Re: Finally Ford see the future.

[WhiteWolf666]

Strongly disagree. The EcoBoost turbocharged 6 banger in the expedition and f150 is a beautiful engine. Better torque and HP than the V8 it replaced, and very similar in performance to the much touted (and now maligned) 6 cylinder diesels pushed by VW/Mercedes/BMW, but without the expensive maintenance, crappy emissions, and ultra slow acceleration. It is a refined, high output powerplant that is significantly better than the flashy "new technologies" going into other manufactures large vehicles. You would never believe that it is a 2.7 liter engine that can tow 8000+ pounds, while delivering decent MPG. (And that is tested against the ASTM standard!) I rented one once, and thought I was driving a big block V8 until I looked under the hood. It doesn't grab the headlines like a self driving hybrid diesel plug in engine, but is certainly an engineering marvel in its own right.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://gas2.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/RANGER_RETURN.png

Yep, that's EXACTLY like the compact Ranger that I used to own. Thanks Ford, you've answered my prayers! /s

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Urban dweller here. My commute is at minimum 1.5 miles from work to home. I splurge and take a different 2.5 mile path because it avoids 2 extremely long lights. Yes, it is anecdotal but no, the distances are not always huge. Every situation is different.

I'd love an electric car so I don't freeze my ass off in winter riding a bike or waiting for the bus. On the other hand, my 'normal' driving doesn't cover ALL of my driving. Might say 'just take public transport', nope - sucks and takes too long. The same 5 minute commute to work on public transport is about 30 minutes plus a 2 block walk on both ends. Can't have that if I need to do long distance travel for work at a moments notice - I need to get to my 'car' which is at home and I don't have 30 minutes to spare - I have 5.

Can I have a small, electric scooter that is completely enclosed from the elements, is more than 2 wheels so it can't tip over, has enough traction/weight to get through snow/ice and can actually handle, realistically, about 100 lbs/30 ft^3 of cargo beyond me as the driver? Can it not cost as much as a normal car? If it does, then for purpose, it is redundant to what I already have. I'm talking 1000-2000 max total. Let me know...

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[dgatwood]

Well, I agree with you, at least up to a point, but IMO having such a long commute is more an argument for asking your employer to set up charging stations at work than for dismissing the entire concept of an EV. Either way, plugging in twice a day is still a whole lot easier than spending ten or fifteen minutes to get off the freeway, go to a gas station, and fill up.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[serviscope_minor]

Mazda aren't exactly engine n00bs: they're the only people to have vaguely recently had a production automotive Wankel engine. Anyway, a cursory google search didn't yield the information you're claiming, so I'm going to call [citation needed].

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

So the EV is used for driving around town - which is what it is perfect for. Gasoline cars pollute much worse when cold, so they're bad for short-trip stop&go. An EV is perfect for that. Gasoline works better on long trips.

Charging at work can usually be arranged though - in the sense that some of your wages is paid in the form of electricity.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[adolf]

50 years ago, efficiency was shit -- as was power-to-weight ratio, and power-to-displacement ratio.

Modern engines are well ahead at every step of these games, including those from Mazda.

And nevermind that folks don't talk about bearings and rings and rebuilds anymore. It's just as possible to rebuild/refresh a new engine as it was one built 50 years ago when these terms were more common. It's just almost never necessary or desirable to do so, because things still tend to be working fine (or at least quite well) after a couple of hundred thousand miles of bad maintenance.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[JoeMerchant]

I'm going to go ahead and call asshole here - not everything published in the last 5 years is readily findable with a Google search, not even if it was published on the Web in an AP press release. Not every statement made on /. needs linked reference of proof. Further, if you Google search long and hard enough, you can often come up with contradictory "evidence" for many things - essentially backing up whatever you want.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ford's EcoBoost engines are made by Mazda.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[JoeMerchant]

The basic improvement in efficiency since the 1972-3 gas crisis is electronic engine management - computer controlled EFI. In the early days they slapped it on poorly refined systems (simple cast exhaust manifolds, simple lowest cost of production intake geometries, etc.) What Mazda said recently (somewhere in the 2010-2014 timeframe, web reference not forthcoming from this source), is that they're making their "new" engines cleaner and greener by applying "advanced technologies" which are basically all the old hot-rodding tricks that have been around forever - but weren't applied by manufacturers because they increased cost of production by a percentage point or two.

Basically, these concepts have been available to engine designers for decades, but only today are they reaching the market because only today are they being forced to by emissions and efficiency regulations.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[meta-monkey]

Ecoboost is just a turbocharger with a green-sounding name, so I wouldn't really call it a new advancement. I guess the advancement would be manufacturing processes that can build a turbocharger that doesn't break too often to put in a mainstream vehicle.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

in the past few years what has Chevy or Chrysler done to innovate?

cars have not been about innovation since airbags and fuel emissions standards became mandatory. none of the big auto manufacturers want to innovate because that costs money, and people are willing to pay a premium to have a NEW car with a few new dohickeys and doodads. Ice systems, integration, cameras and internet connections are what the people want. fuel efficency really means nothing in the long run as most people will offset higher fuel costs with shiny and new.

case in point: tesla, how can none of the big auto manufacturers with their world wide groups of engineers compete? and then take a look at all of the patents that the big three alone are sitting on and yet not doing much with them at all.. and then there is saturn and their electric car (see: who killed the electric car)

cars are not a technology that will be innovative until they are self driving. this is not fords fault, this is not a fault of any auto manufacturer, this is just them protecting their business as once cars are self driving there is no real need for personal ownership and thus no need for such high sales, meaning smaller production and engineering teams.

To conclude; there is no way that any company could really innovate any more in any way that would cause a ground shaking movement. sure they could all go EV and find better battery technology but in the end the personal automobile has evolved as far as it really can.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[bobbied]

Asking for a charger in the parking lot is pretty unlikely to produce one, at least here where I work. My friend works here too, he's asking and so far, even though the infrastructure was included when the facility was built last year, the chargers and wiring where not installed. I would consider his chances better than average to get a charger or two installed with the infrastructure in place, but so far, that's not been the case.

So my old man's saying "Wish in one hand and $#I+ in the other and see which one is the fullest" remains true.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the hell have you been? Ford has had some of the top tech for quite a bit if time now. They had many hybrids when other manufacturers had none. They were one of the firsts to have flex fuel vehicles (the 96 Taurus was the first production car that could run flex fuel and the model t engine could even run ethanol) they have had a plug in Escape for AWHILE now and also make plug in Fusions and C-max's. They were the first to bring infotainment systems in to vehicles also. If you are such a "fan" how do you know absolutely nothing about the company?

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, while we knew about those performance improvements, they were always too finicky for mass production. When working at scale like the automakers, you have to detune a bit to make sure that with all the minor variations in manufacture, you come out with an acceptably small failure rate. When a gearhead is custom building their hotrod, they can spend the time making the fine-tuning adjustments that were A) impractical to do to every engine on an assembly line B) more likely to need re-tuning with engine wear and changing of seasons C) beyond the capability of your average driver (whose capability tops out at changing out a spare tire, and sometimes not even that).

It's the same reason the liquid-nitrogen overclocker has a new intel chip pushing 12ghz, but you can't buy them that way from the factory. It's not stable or cost-effective to mass produce in that high-performance configuration.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[minogully]

EPA ratings, which is the standard in North America to measure against is not the absolute IDEAL situation, you can actually get much higher range in ideal conditions. But the EPA range more accurately reflects the typical range that you would see in regular driving conditions. But you are correct that the actual mileage can be less in the worst conditions (winter, which requires cabin heating & traffic jam, which requires a lot of accelerating/decelerating). If you are unlucky to drive in these conditions, you'll get about 50% of the EPA range with a Leaf and about 66% of the EPA range with a Tesla. You can mitigate this to a certain degree by heating your cabin while it's still plugged in at home and rely more on heated seats than heating the air of the cabin.

100 miles is still pretty good, since according to this site, only 8% of the American population commute 75 miles or more in a day. Which means that, 92% of Americans still have at least 25 miles of wiggle room for detours or errands.

There is battery degradation to factor in, but this varies based on battery chemistry and cooling systems (or if there's no cooling system, your climate). So you can have pretty bad degradation as in the case of a Nissan Leaf, which has no battery cooling system (degrades to 70% in 8.3 years in Syracuse NY, in 3.4 years in Houston TX), or in the case of a Tesla, which has an active cooling system, has been shown to lose only 5% after 50,000 miles and about 8% after 100,000 miles.

I would imagine (or hope) that Ford would be smart enough to make their battery system more like Tesla's and less like Nissan's, leaving your friend with 132 miles of range even in the worst conditions.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah well, fine, I'll call dickhead then.

Mazda made some seriously top end engines, so the comment was "random press release I can't find says Mazda is moving from making shitbox engines to using 1960s tech", has the ring of "not being accurate" to it.

Further, if you Google search long and hard enough, you can often come up with contradictory "evidence" for many things - essentially backing up whatever you want.

I had a friend who owned an RX8. I don't need to use google to know about it. Are you seriously denying that Mazda didn't in fact make some top end engines? Or that anyone else has recently fielded an automotive Wankel engine?

Not every statement made on /. needs linked reference of proof.

If you make statements that contradict easy to make observations then yeah, you need proof otherwise they won't be believed.

It also doesn't help that the post had other errors, further compounding its lack of believability.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Verdatum]

I'm under the impression that a major reason why light-truck mileage hasn't improved has been economic reasons. Most of the demand for light-trucks was shifted over to SUVs for tax reasons. Other countries have light-trucks but, for the US market, last I checked, no one is making much of anything for quite awhile now. And there's no incentive to work towards higher efficiency. If there was a demand for a light truck with higher efficiency, as you sort of hint, one of the major possibilities is in weight reduction by changing to different alloys or composites. But since pretty much no one has made a high-volume production automobile using a composite chassis, and making that happen would require tens of billions of dollars and many more years of development; I'm pretty sure that light trucks in the US are not gonna be the first category slated for that experiment.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Verdatum]

The advancement is just that the US didn't previously care about turbocharging gasoline vehicles or light-duty trucks & SUVs. Europe has been into it for ages because gas/diesel is so much more expensive there. When demand finally clicked in the US, Ford went to the Germans and had them tell us how it's all done. So yeah, not really an advancement unless you think domestically. Globally, it's just catch-up.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[JoeMerchant]

Mazda makes good engines, but they are, at the end of the day, just another auto manufacturer - the pressures of business mean that, even though they knew about the advantages of tuned length tubular headers back in the 1960s, for whatever reasons (economics I would assume) they chose not to equip any of their production cars with them until just recently. Do you claim that Mazdas have been shipping from the factory with tuned length exhaust headers since the 1960s?

If you think I'm knocking Mazda, you read me wrong, they're in front of the pack, with Wankel and lots of other engine innovations. What I'm knocking is the entire industry that seems to take multiple decades to implement solidly demonstrated improvements in efficiency, presumably because that little improvement in efficiency isn't going to help sales as much as the little increase in sales price will hurt, even when the improvement is a net big win in TCO. If you want to run to root causes, I'm knocking our implementation of free market economics.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[serviscope_minor]

OK, I misunderstood the tone of your post then, and thought you were implying things other than what you were.

I still don't think you have it 100% right. There's a huge difference between the cost-is-no-barrier, needs to only run for 3 races type of thing and a general purpose automotive engine which has to run for 150,000 miles fro seal level to 13,000 feet, in all sorts of weather and sometimes towing a load. And all made to a price point people can actually afford.

It's much harder to apply the efficiency things in those circumstances, because the range of operating conditions is so variable. For example the Atkinson cycle has been known since 1882, but the specific power is reduced compared to the Otto cycle. It only became practical in an automotive setting when parallel hybrid electrics became practical, so the electric motor could provide the additional bursts of power, when the ICE isn't sufficient.

Likewise hemispherical heads are good for some things but not others. For example they improve the compression ratio, but that only helps if you are using high octane fuel and are operating under appropriate conditions. That's only really practical for general automotive use with the modern systems that can reliably detect and correct for knocking.

But yes. I do agree with the points you just made.

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[JoeMerchant]

Sorry to "take it down a notch" on you, but I had just read a "rebuttal" from some genius cherry picking his sources and linking to everything that sees things his way and reducing complex multi-dimensional issues to a simple binary table that backs up his world view... it means little or nothing.

The fact that I'm calling out Mazda is a reflection of the fact that I actually read Mazda press releases (I own two of them, one since new in 1991).

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're all a bunch of whiny bitches and your Google-fu is WEAK!

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Cmdln Daco]

You think they will only have one chassis/cab style? You think the marketing clowns would put one of the 'stripped' versions in the advance publicity?

Re:Finally Ford see the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously are living under your own 'reality distortion field'. Heaven forbid you actually google the original Rangers to see what they were.

This truck is the same size as a "full sized" truck back when the Ranger compacts were popular. Pull your head out of your ass and do a little research.

Trump mentioned in the actual article

[Nova Express]

"We're encouraged by the pro-growth policies of President Trump," Fields said when announcing the investment shift from Mexico to the Flat Rock facility.

While this is not quoted in the opening paragraph, this would seem to be a significant factor in the decision, and thus maybe worth at least a passing summary in the Slashdot blurb?

Re:Trump mentioned in the actual article

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

And put Trump in a good light?
There's the rub...

Re:Trump mentioned in the actual article

[SeaFox]

"We're encouraged by the pro-growth policies of President Trump," Fields said when announcing the investment shift from Mexico to the Flat Rock facility.

While this is not quoted in the opening paragraph, this would seem to be a significant factor in the decision, and thus maybe worth at least a passing summary in the Slashdot blurb?

A significant factor, but seems fairly obvious, too. I wouldn't expect a company to cancel outsourcing plans normally, and the current political climate is going to be the best reason to.

Tl;DR: It didn't need to be stated this is because Trump got elected.

Re:Trump mentioned in the actual article

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Fox Business story on the subject:

"Ford Chief Executive Mark Fields said the decision to cancel the new Mexico factory was the result of sagging demand for small cars in North America and not because Trump was elected president. He told Fox Business that the automaker would have made the same decision even if Trump had not been elected."

Re:Trump mentioned in the actual article

[bongey]

What do you expect from Hillary Obama drone BeauHD. His twitter feed, "Trump is a saggy sack of shit. If any one of you is even remotely considering voting for him this November, please unfollow me. "

Re:Trump mentioned in the actual article

[Bryan Ischo]

Regardless of how you feel about politicians, I think we can all agree that Slashdot editors are retards.

Re: Trump mentioned in the actual article

[Anonymous Coward]

You're absolutely right. We need more politics here.

Re:Trump mentioned in the actual article

[Anonymous Coward]

Fox is a bunch of leftie communists!

Re:Trump mentioned in the actual article

[erapert]

Do you mean that they would have made the same decision to cancel the billion dollar plant in Mexico?
Or do you mean they would have made the same decision to build/upgrade a $700M plant in the US?
Or do you mean they would have done both of those things even if Trump hadn't been elected?
But wouldn't directly quoting a guy from Ford about their motivations trump (no pun intended) what someone from Fox Business says about Ford's motives?

Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

You can figure that out in the summary alone. They are doing this because it's nearly $1 billion cheaper to invest $700 million instead of $1.6 billion.

Follow the money, always follow the money. The Presidency almost NEVER has any impact on business decisions, although people like to think so and I'm sure Trump will play with his little horn falsely touting how he made this happen.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for that whole bailout thing...

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Princeofcups]

You can figure that out in the summary alone. They are doing this because it's nearly $1 billion cheaper to invest $700 million instead of $1.6 billion.

Follow the money, always follow the money. The Presidency almost NEVER has any impact on business decisions, although people like to think so and I'm sure Trump will play with his little horn falsely touting how he made this happen.

It's going to W all over again. Blame everything bad they do on the previous administration, and take credit for everything good that happens because of the previous administration's work.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[gral]

I figured when this came out, everyone would assume it was Mr. Trump. Reading further in the article, you realize Ford is still planning on moving the smaller car divisions to Mexico. They are not building a new facility, just moving to an already existing plant. They are going to use the US factory for Light Truck and SUV mainly. So they are setting themselves up for another BIG issue when gas prices rise again.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[DonaId Trump]

::sniff::

WRONG!

This is my doing, BIGLY, believe me. Ford is going to build a new truck, folks, it's going to be called the Ford Sharecropper, and it's going to have all the cyber in it, and -- did you know, we're going to build up our Ford. We're going to have such a strong Ford that nobody, nobody is going to mess with us. We're not going to have to use it. I'm going to open up our Ford laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We're going to open up those Ford laws. We're going to Ford so much you may even get tired of Fording, and you'll say 'please, please, it's too much Fording. We can't take it any more. Mr. President, it's too much!' And I'll say no it isn't! We have to keep Fording! We have to Ford more! We're going to Ford more! We're going to Ford so much! BELIEVE ME!

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, since the president has so little power to do good, surely no one will complain or even be afraid of Trump doing anything bad. /s

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[bluegutang]

A $700 million investment in place of a $1.6 billion investment? That's protectionism for you - you temporarily get more jobs at home, but your economy shrinks to less than half of its size.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

not so sure you can dismiss as not being influence by Trump's meeting with Ford

https://media.ford.com/content...

Ford Motor Company Statement on U.S. Manufacturing

We continue to engage with President-elect Trumpâ(TM)s team â" and the new Congress â" as they shape the policy agenda for 2017. We have shared our commitment to continue investing in the U.S. and creating American jobs â" building on the $12 billion we have invested in our U.S. plants and the nearly 28,000 U.S. jobs Ford has created in the past five years. Ford continues to employ more American autoworkers and produce more American made vehicles than anyone.

On Thursday, we confirmed with the President-elect that, with his support, our small Lincoln utility vehicle made at the Louisville Assembly Plant will stay in Kentucky. We are encouraged that President-elect Trump and the new Congress will pursue policies that will improve U.S. competitiveness and make it possible to keep production of this vehicle here in the United States.

We will have more details to share on our future plans at the appropriate time.

Of course, the bottom line is the bottom line, but if Trump and the Republican Congress manage to give some huge tax breaks to American manufacturers, it could certainly sway the decision of whether to invest in a new facility out of country, or to refit an existing one and keep the jobs here in the meantime.

captcha:doubters

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[bobbied]

But the president's policies CAN have a large affect on corporate business. Tax law and regulations can have a drastic affect on when, how and where a company chooses to do things.

Where it's unlikely a president can do all that much by themselves, they do hold a large sway over the making of laws, regulations and enforcement activities, which CAN and DO have drastic affects on business activity.

Don't believe me? Wait and watch as Obamacare is dismantled and the corporate tax rates get lowered as I expect when Trump keeps his campaign promises. Good or bad, everyone agrees something dramatic will happen.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Trailer Trash]

You can figure that out in the summary alone. They are doing this because it's nearly $1 billion cheaper to invest $700 million instead of $1.6 billion.

Follow the money, always follow the money. The Presidency almost NEVER has any impact on business decisions, although people like to think so and I'm sure Trump will play with his little horn falsely touting how he made this happen.

It's going to W all over again. Blame everything bad they do on the previous administration, and take credit for everything good that happens because of the previous administration's work.

Yep. It's easy to say this isn't because of Trump - and perhaps some single events aren't because of him - but it's obvious that a lot more of these stories are coming out of the woodwork in the last two months.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all ready to say this, but it also doesn't seem fair to say that a soon-to-be president did it either. It seems more like an operational business decision. Perhaps something like "regardless of who becomes president, the Ford Motor Company is going to invest in electric vehicle technology in an US division, while expanding manufacturing plants worldwide, including the US, Canada, Mexico, China, the United Kingdom, Germany, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and South Africa."

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[D00MSlayer]

So much winning, President Chester Cheeto, Charlie himself would be proud.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[p0p0]

"We're encouraged by the pro-growth policies of President Trump," Fields said when announcing the investment shift from Mexico to the Flat Rock facility.

Reality. Welcome to it.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

If the $1.6B isn't invested your country to begin with, how does that help you at all? $700M at home is better than $0 at home.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, that press release makes it crystal clear that Trump had everything to do with this!

Trump scared with the threat of import tariffs if they build a plant in Mexico. Ford responds by announcing that it will invest nearly 6% at much in the US as it did in the past 5 years under the Obama administration. All Trump needs to do now is consistently convince Ford to do something like this 4 to 5 times per year for the next 5 years and the libtards will have to admit that Trump is now worse, then their beloved Obama in this particular respect.

And this good news couldn't have come at a better time, because if Trump follows through on his promises to stifle international trade with tariffs, those poor fuckers in the bottom 75% are going to find it much harder to balance their budgets with the great(ly increased) of goods.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump haters gonna hate. Now all Trump needs to do is repeat this 4--5 times per year for the next 5 years with Ford, and he'll have matched their precious Obama.

Unfortunately, the libtards are too stupid to credit Obama with every decision that Ford makes (which is why up until November this sort of routine announcement wasn't newsworthy), so even then they probably still won't admit that Trump is 100% responsible for every positive thing that happens and Obama is 100% responsible for every bad thing that happens.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

You can figure that out in the summary alone. They are doing this because it's nearly $1 billion cheaper to invest $700 million instead of $1.6 billion.

Follow the money, always follow the money. The Presidency almost NEVER has any impact on business decisions, although people like to think so and I'm sure Trump will play with his little horn falsely touting how he made this happen.

That's not how this works.

Ford doesn't lose the money if it's $700M or $1.6B; it simply transfers from cash to fixed assets and the value of the company stays even; by building a factory the factory has a value that could be sold. So it doesn't affect them.

In fact I would argue this is a less valuable deal. I haven't seen the numbers they're projecting of course, but EVs are a tiny percentage of the auto market. The plant in Mexico would likely have produced more cars that could be sold than an EV plant conversion will be able to do. Either way though, followign the money means return on investment; are they getting a higher percentage revenue growth with the $700M EV investment vs. the revenue growth measured against the $1.6B Mexico plant. There's no way to know that, as that would be internal financial calculations.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

I complement you for understanding the use of words effect vs. affect. Your knowledge on this point ads credibility to your argument.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Pfhorrest]

The company that owns that investment is in your country.

Think as if it were people: a given American citizen might $X invested domestically, or $2X invested internationally. In the latter case, the American citizen has twice as much money invested somewhere earning him more money, which is better for him, the American, even though that money isn't invested in other Americans.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who run these companies aren't idiots. They know that if they recast existing plans as "because the egomaniac is a really good guy" it will buy them favor with the nutjob-elect.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Ogive17]

I agree with you that Trump will take full credit for this announcement. However the reason for Ford's decision was based on market mix, not because it cost nearly $1billion less to do it in the US.

The plant in Mexico was designed to produce compact cars with very little profit margin. The sales in that segment for Ford are not doing well. Instead they will invest in a current plant that will make it more efficient, probably more flexible, and they'll continue to build larger vehicles.

They are betting that oil prices remain low keeping demand for their SUVs and trucks high for the foreseeable future. Clearly the policies of the Republicans are to relax standards on pollution to allow companies to extract more oil.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA. The guy from Ford mentions Trump directly in the decision. But yes, tell us how it's not Trump even though the article has a direct quote of Ford's CEO saying the incoming administration played a factor in the decision while acting like you read the fucking article.

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[erapert]

But why would they have considered the $1.6B deal in the first place?

Re:Nothing to do with Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

The Presidency almost NEVER has any impact on business decisions

modded "3, Insightful" lol

Trumptards - We ride!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump does things that Obama and Clinton couldn't do. #MAGA

WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

America is getting great again already!

More power to Ford (best US V-8)

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:More power to Ford (best US V-8)

[HornWumpus]

LS6 is better in every way/number.

Two Decisions are Unrelated

[retroworks]

I have read the linked article and article in WSJ and WashPost. There appears to be some confusion in the Ars Technica article, and in the summary. The investment in the Flat Rock Michigan plant is to create new electric vehicles, to maintain employment for the Ford Escort employees, as Ford continues its plan to move the Escorts to 100% in Mexico. This is similar to the November story, when Ford moved mature Lincoln manufacturing from Louisville KY to Mexico, but invested in a new vehicle manufacturing in KY rather than close the plant.

From the Post https://www.washingtonpost.com... :

"At Ford, Joseph Hinrichs, president of Ford in the Americas, said the decision to produce the newly announced cars in the United States was made recently and without consulting people connected to Trump. Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford shared the news with Trump in a phone call Tuesday morning, though the details of that call were not immediately available.

While the Ford Focus will soon be produced south of the border, Hinrichs said the 3,500 workers who currently make the car at its production facility in Wayne, Mich., will instead build two yet-to-be-named vehicles, and thus those jobs will stay in place."

Trump seems very talented at getting his name into headlines about decisions that have nothing to do with him

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[MightyMartian]

He's going to need to generate as much political capital as he can before he actually takes office, because wants the rubber hits the road, the quick wins will dry up pretty damned soon.

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[Anonymous Coward]

Ford still makes the Escort???

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[HornWumpus]

Onto 'Bargaining', very good progress.

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[Cmdln Daco]

Apparently they're shipping all that old Escort tooling down to Mexico. It makes sense to do something with it.

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI to US readers: A 2017 model in USA will be like a 2020/2021 model in Mexico and LatinAmerica. Why? In USA it will be discontinued by a new model but they have a good inventory of replacement parts and can sell the old model parts like new ones. As some guy said above: Money call money.

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[bongey]

"Mexican Officials Caught Off Guard by Ford’s Move to Cancel Plant Project" WSJ. Your entire point is based on the anti Trump propaganda coming out of the WaPo . The WaPo and you hasn't figured out that GM and Ford are different companies, they shouldn't be mixing what is happening with GM to discredit any positive action Trump accomplished with Ford. http://www.wsj.com/articles/me...

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[retroworks]

Here is the quote from the article you post which says the Two Decisions (Michigan investment in electric and Hermisillo Mexico investment instead of San Louis Potosi Mexico Ford Focus plant:

Ford had planned to build the Focus, a small car, in the new factory. It will instead move production of the model from Michigan to an existing plant in Hermosillo, Mexico, a move that saves money and limits the amount of capacity devoted to the product.

Your ad homimen attack on WaPo may be true. But a decision to make socks in Michigan is unrelated to a decision to make Twinkies in Mexico's Hermisillo instead of Mexico's Potosi. Trump and Ford CEO are apparently palsy, maybe Trump does deserve credit. I'm simply pointing out that the electric car jobs in Michigan have nothing to do with shifting jobs between two Mexico locations (making Ford Focus in an Escort plant)

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[MightyMartian]

And do you think Congress is just going to sit by and let him turn the US into a pariah trade state? Let's remember here, US manufacturers don't just manufacture for domestic markets, and if Trump's anti-trade tirades continue, this could severely impact US industry. The US has a lot to lose if it gets into tit-for-tat trade wars.

Re:Two Decisions are Unrelated

[HornWumpus]

China already has huge tariffs on imports. Up till now they were the only ones fighting the 'trade war', we were happy enough to head off WWIII by making them trading partners.

But the purpose of all the trade has been accomplished. China is completely dependant on foreign markets. Time to make the trade somewhat fair. China won't like it, will call it unfair, having been spoiled rotten by the last 20+ years of one sided trade.

India is different, they haven't made nearly as much of the opportunities versus China. But it's still time for 'force open' their domestic markets.

Don't despair and make China 'your side' because the Ds are powerless. You'll be on to 'depression' soon enough.

Electric for the Win?

[foxalopex]

So we need someone like Trump to convince people that electric vehicles work? Pretty sad when you think about it considering I've driven a Volt for 3 years and it's been a great car. Ironic isn't it. What's next, Trump says global warming is real and suddenly everyone who's a climate denier changes?

Re:Electric for the Win?

[andersenep]

So we need someone like Trump to convince people that electric vehicles work? Pretty sad when you think about it considering I've driven a Volt for 3 years and it's been a great car. Ironic isn't it. What's next, Trump says global warming is real and suddenly everyone who's a climate denier changes?

I have never needed convincing that electric vehicles work. I just don't think they are a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Especially considering most of the electricity to power electric vehicles comes from.....FOSSIL FUELS!

Re:Electric for the Win?

[MightyMartian]

Well, there's an answer to that as well. But you have to start somewhere.

Re:Electric for the Win?

[andersenep]

if there was an economically viable answer, we'd be using it. wind and solar is a joke at any sort of scale, and nuclear comes with its own baggage. then you have the battery manufacturing/disposal to consider as well. it's also worth noting that chevy takes a significant loss on every volt they sell (the OP's vehicle).

Re:Electric for the Win?

[MightyMartian]

The answer is, of course, to start pricing fossil fuels for the damage they actually are doing and will do, instead of basically subsidizing them by making our descendants pay for the bulk of the damage. If free markets are the answer (and I believe they are), then every ton of CO2 emitted should be taxed. Screw the carbon credits, screw the fantasy sequestering, just tax the CO2 directly, and, if everyone who believes in free markets is right, economics will take care of the rest.

Or we can just let it all go to shit, watch as insurance rates and mitigation costs go up year by year, and the only winners are a bunch of old men looking to eek a few more years profits out of fossil fuels before even the most blatant fossil fuel promoters admit the day is done.

Re:Electric for the Win?

[andersenep]

there simply is no other source beyond fossil fuels to provide the amount of energy we consume, with the exception of nuclear. i would love to see investment in nuclear power, but i don't have any illusions that it would not require heavy subsidies from the government to become a dominant source of electricity.

i guess if you are willing to take all those CO2 tax dollars and invest in nuke power, i could get on board. it's probably ain't gonna happen any time soon though.

Re:Electric for the Win?

[MightyMartian]

Of course there is, and there are even ways to store that energy (flywheels have been mentioned). It's just that between those who just want to be contrarians due to personality problems and those who want to maintain fossil fuels as the pre-eminent source of energy for profit motives, these strange stories about how the most plentiful energy sources on the planet being forever inadequate keep getting circulated.

Believe me, stick $1000 a ton on CO2 emissions, and you'll find out how quickly oil, natural gas and coal can be shed as energy sources.

Or we can wait a few decades until things are really fucked up and then the costs will be astronomical.

Re:Electric for the Win?

[andersenep]

what is this mysterious energy source that all us contrarians are ignorant of? storing is great, but you gotta get the energy from somewhere.
 

Re:Electric for the Win?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will your volt drive through a foot of snow hauling 2000lbs worth of firewood? Thought not.

Re:Electric for the Win?

[Anonymous Coward]

> wind and solar is a joke at any sort of scale Yeah, germany is a small country.

Re:Electric for the Win?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would your petrol engine'd Ford Fiesta manage that? No? I guess what you need is a truck, not a family car. For all the times (every day, I expect) you need to do that.

Losing

[ranton]

Another win for The Donald

And a loss for our domestic car companies who apparently are starting to become less competitive to appease our new President. In what world is a car company deciding to cancel $1.6 billion in investment for the future and replace it with only $700 billion of investment a good thing?

This may have nothing to do with the new administration. Ford could have simply realized they couldn't justify $1.6 billion in investment for new facilities, and needed to be more cautious by enhancing current factories. But if they really did make this decision because of fear of tariffs, we are already starting to see some of the worst consequences of protectionism. American companies being coerced to decrease efficiency to appease those who oppose the modernization of our workforce cannot be considered a win for anyone concerned about the long term economic health of our country.

Re:Losing

[Talderas]

In what world is a car company deciding to cancel $1.6 billion in investment for the future and replace it with only $700 billion of investment a good thing?

That sounds fabulous for the US. $700bn invested in the US instead of $1.6bn in Mexico?

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you hate America?

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet so many import brand cars are actually made in factories in the USA so why can't our domestic brands keep it in country?

Re:Losing

[ranton]

That sounds fabulous for the US. $700bn invested in the US instead of $1.6bn in Mexico?

Well, can't edit comments, but it's easy to see from the summary that I meant $700 million.

And if you weren't just being pedantic, it's fairly clear that Ford's total production of cars will be less from a $700 million addition than a $1.6 billion facility in a country with lower manufacturing costs. So if this had anything to do with the current administration, then the loss here is all of the cars Ford could have sold but now won't because of fear of a trade war. That is not a good thing.

Re:Losing

[ranton]

And yet so many import brand cars are actually made in factories in the USA so why can't our domestic brands keep it in country?

They do when it makes sense to do so, and don't when it doesn't. Just like import brand cars which are sometimes built in the US and sometimes aren't.

Re:Losing

[fluffernutter]

He killed a 1.6 billion project and got 700 million. How is that winning?

Re:Losing

[ranton]

Why do you hate America?

I love my country, which is why I want it to stay competitive. Factory payrolls, construction contracts, and industrial production all increased after the Smoot-Hawley act as well, but the Great Depression was a grim reminder of what happens when countries try for short term gains through protectionist measures.

Re:Losing

[oddtodd]

The Mexico plant was to make Focus vehicles, sales of which have tanked (~18%) over the past several quarters.
Probably more of a bizzness decision than a 'Trumpitulation'.
Ha! I made up a new word, let's see if it has legs...

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

because investing $700 million America is better than investing $0 in America?

your question is just as stupid as Donald Trump is.

Re:Losing

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yeah, but even though investing $.7b in the US is better than investing $0b in the US, it still doesn't tell you whether it was better to invest $.7b in the US or $1.6b in Mexico, which is an entirely different set of options. Not until you see the profits at least, let alone further consequences.

Re:Losing

[ClickOnThis]

Why do you hate America?

Do you still beat your wife?

Behold the power of a question with an unsubstantiated premise.

Re:Losing

[fluffernutter]

If Trump used the same bag of tricks he used with Carrier some of that 700 million will be offset by tax cuts, and quickly you end up with a net gain of peanuts.

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Wives need a good beating every now and then. Men should rule the household.

Re:Losing

[Gr8Apes]

I'm pretty sure that this decision was going to be made regardless of Trump. Ford is just using it as a chit they're going to call in later, but Trump has a bad habit of stiffing people. There's no way a $700M investment in the US is going to replace a 1.6B investment in Mexico unless the numbers just weren't there for Mexico in the first place.

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

He killed a 1.6 billion project and got 700 million. How is that winning?

It leaves 900 million dollars for the CEO's bonus.

Re:Losing

[Cmdln Daco]

A good number of the import-brand cars made in the US are made without the cumbersome US trade unions. Also, the Japanese companies that produce cars in the US use modern Japanese design and production practices.

Anybody who works in the automotive supply chain for General Motors, and probably even Ford to a certain degree, knows what giant bumbling operations the US automakers run.

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice.

In a courtroom, for example, I believe the immediate objections would be at least one of the following:
Facts not in evidence (unless abuse is already established)
Inflammatory
Counsel is testifying (unless abuse is already established)
Irrelevant or immaterial (witness called for expert testimony in say HVAC systems design/operation)

IANAL but ClickOnThis, what a great response. Personally, I agree with the GP, but I think it best to use objective reasoning rather than appeals to emotion.

Re: Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what your gay husband tells you?

Re:Losing

[Pinky's Brain]

The great depression was also caused by a shortage of money, the Fed's hands were tied, a fact neatly exemplified by early 30s Germany success after being forced off gold. That can't really happen today, at least not in the US (Euro countries aren't so lucky). Which is not to say trade ties aren't useful for protecting against the other events which happened in the thirties

Maybe if the globalists and their allies had not made trade agreements which reward racing to the bottom for labour protection and environmental standards this wouldn't have happened. No democratic president ever lifted one finger to make that happen, that's for damn sure.

Re: Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no our companies efficiency might slightly decrease better offshore more jobs. Slit your throat with a razor in the toilet globalist scum

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain why protectionist policies work for Europe, China, and Japan, but could not possibly work for the US.

Re:Losing

[Kartu]

New model is due soon, that's likely the main reason sales tanked.

Re: Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Those small car sales have tanked domestically due to a temporary reduction in oil prices due to deliberate over supply. OPEC have said that they're reducing supply, so demand for those models are likely to trend upwards again.

Re:Losing

[Vitriol Angst]

Hoover did implement tariffs and some protections -- but they were too late to steer the economy. It's not an all and or all good thing with tariffs -- it's more like the brakes on your car -- none is bad, too much and you can't go anywhere.

Stock speculations on land derivatives was listed as the main cause. Public works projects and infrastructure projects really helped pull us out. The war did cause lag (no, it did NOT help the economy. blowig up bridges does not trump building them).

Besides, trade was only about 5% of the economy at the time. Tariffs or none wouldn't have made a difference.

Re:Losing

[ranton]

Explain why protectionist policies work for Europe, China, and Japan, but could not possibly work for the US.

They either don't work well or are in very different situations than the US.

Japan is a nation without much natural resources, so they need to be more careful than most nations. Their protectionist strategies make it impossible to have the same kind of GDP per capita as nations such as the US or EU, but they don't have much of a choice. They don't have much natural resources so they have to be very protective of the resources they have. They are willing to live with a lower ceiling to ensure a higher floor. But regardless about conjecture regarding why Japan's policies work for them, I doubt the median US household would want the nearly 20% pay cut to match the Japanese.

Protectionist strategies work great for developing countries. They have something wealthier nations need (cheap labor) so they are allowed to play by a different set of rules. China will not be able to play their current game for much longer as they are no longer the cheapest labor force out there. Already they are pushing automation to reduce their labor costs so their current economic engine is not disrupted too much. But once again I doubt the median US household would want a more than 80% pay cut to match the Chinese, so I wouldn't want to emulate them too much.

And other than agriculturally, the EU is not significantly more protectionist than the US. EU protectionism is on the rise, but not for long enough for the adverse effects to be felt. That is the worst part of protectionist strategies, they actually do work for a short period even in developed nations until their long term negative effects kick in. But yet again, are you saying the US would enjoy the 25% drop in median wages it would take to emulate the EU more closely?

Re: Losing

[ranton]

Yes, we should offshore as many jobs as we can where US citizens do not have a competitive advantage compared to the global market. This is why we still have the largest economy both in total size and per capita when compared to similarly sized nations.

Try gaining some useful skills and you'll see the benefits of this increased efficiency too. Two thirds of the people leaving the middle class are moving to the upper middle class. We should be doing more to help those who are unable to keep up, but propping up jobs which shouldn't be done in this country anyway just because we feel sorry for them is the wrong answer.

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether they are working or not depends on what goals one wants to achieve, but the fact is the US currently has plenty of protectionist policies, while Europe and Japan do not. China, on the other hand, goes even further than the US.

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is what was promised to Ford to give up the Mexico plant.

Re:Losing

[fbobraga]

but Mexico is in "America"!

because investing $700 million America is better than investing $1.6 billion in America?

FTFY (the above statement sounds stupid, no?)

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you call a woman with two black eyes? Bitch learned her lesson.

What do you call a woman with one black eye? Quick learner.

Re:Losing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you hate America?

I love my country, which is why I want it to stay competitive. Factory payrolls, construction contracts, and industrial production all increased after the Smoot-Hawley act as well, but the Great Depression was a grim reminder of what happens when countries try for short term gains through protectionist measures.

It may be giving protectionism a bit too much credit for being THE reason for the great depression, given that most economists consider protectionism a RESPONSE to the depression, not necessarily a CAUSE. Many, many other factors had a much bigger role in sending that snow ball down the hill.

Mustang?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will be interested to hear the fully synthetic engine noise of their electric mustang. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/01/22/1619252/fake-engine-noise-is-the-auto-industrys-dirty-little-secret

Not Anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Ford, like America, is becoming great again!

Re:Not Anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

We have never made good cars, and probably never will. Ford was so great they needed a bailout?

Re:Not Anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

When did Ford receive a bailout, you ignorant piece of shit?

Re:Not Anymore

[dehachel12]

Teslas are great cars!

700 jobs

[PopeRatzo]

The new Ford investment in the US will create 700 jobs.

Re:700 jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation needed.

Re:700 jobs

[wyHunter]

Which is 700 more than they would have. The 700m is NOT just for the jobs - it's for the PLANT.

Re:700 jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

From the summary you failed to read or even glance over

Instead, the company wants to invest $700 million in the existing Flat Rock facility, generating 700 new jobs focused on EV and autonomous initiatives at that location, according to Ford

Re:700 jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you let PopeRatzo answer that one? How else can I waste his time and rile up his vitriol?

Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Pollux]

Because we all know that billion dollar investments from multi-billion dollar corporations can be changed overnight on the whim of a Tweet.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[rmullig2]

Every large corporation considers the possible outcomes of a presidential election and make contingency plans based upon them. In this case it was very clear:

Hillary wins -> jobs go to Mexico
Trump wins -> jobs stay in the US

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet I'd bet you'd be the first to blame Trump if a tweet turned things the other way..

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Aighearach]

The really funny part is that the whole narrative doesn't add up; the claim is they were going to invest $1.6B in Mexico because everything is cheaper there, so instead now they're going to invest $700M in the US because... Trump. That math just doesn't work out. Obviously what actually happened is that the thing they were thinking about building for $1.6B simply isn't going to happen right now, and a totally unrelated thing that costs $700M is happening in the US. Maybe those are related, maybe not, but the narrative is clearly not true.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Mr D from 63]

Try reading the words "existing facility". Did you consider that maybe it cost less to ramp up at an existing facility and add to existing employees than to start from scratch and train an entire new set of employees? Also, the Mexico sum was apparently intended to be spent over a longer time frame.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they even consider Mexico then, if it was always going to be cheaper to update an existing facility?

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Mr D from 63]

Why would they even consider Mexico then, if it was always going to be cheaper to update an existing facility?

Long term labor cost.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[AutodidactLabrat]

FALSE!
The REAL reason Ford won't go to Mexico has nothing to do with Trump says Ford CEO

Re: Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you dumb? Ford was specifically called out by Trump multiple times over the entirety of Trumps election campaign and you believe this crap limpout by their CEO?

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Darinbob]

Because they were expanding. There was world wide demand (most of whom don't care where Ford builds stuff). They needed more factories. However the market for smaller cars has been drying up, so the demand for more production capacity was drying up also. The plant in Flint was already earmarked to build newer electric vehicles, and demand for those has been going up. They were never going to build the electric cars in Mexico or the small cars in Flint.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[TigerPlish]

Hillary wins -> jobs go to Mexico
Trump wins -> jobs stay in the US

You mean.. BILL wins (twice) , jobs went to mexico. And oh boy, did they!

But let's not forget that NAFTA was drafted under Reagan's terms in office, so.. yeah buddy, both sides are taking turns at fscking us.

Re: Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

In my next candidacy I will summon the sun to rise every morning from the east. In the past, huge populations where controlled with a few (predicted) eclipses. And people would allow human sacrifices to have the world saved. Same thing today, but people are mich more ignirant and a tweet will amke them praise their new false prophet powers.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, they are investing less because . . . Trump They have several options for the rest of their money:

1. Use it to stay afloat, if Trump wrecks the economy. No further investment then
2. Invest in the U.S., if Trump is serious about taxing imports
3. Invest in Mexico, if Trump turns out to be "all talk, no effective policies"

Re: Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the dumber things I've ever read here, thanks.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[AmiMoJo]

"By late fall, it was very clear we didn't need the capacity, and we made the decision."

In other words, they are expecting times to be bad.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

from working at ford in one of their assembly plants... well they are usually not that far off on these things.

Re: Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

False equivalence, dumbfuck.

Re: Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, fumbduck.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[erapert]

You just undermined your own argument.
First you said it was cheaper to ramp up an existing facility.
Then you said that ramping up an existing one wasn't cheaper because labor costs in Mexico make it cheaper to build a new one.

Pick one.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

You think they didn't calculate and factor in the long term labor cost for both options?!
How fucking stupid do you think they are? How fucking stupid are you?

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Mr D from 63]

No, I said it was less expensive to upgrade an existing facility, and the reason they may have wanted to spend more on a new one is the lower labor rates in Mexico long term. Maybe you mis-read something.

Re:Thanks to Trump? Obviously!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they're expecting their EVs to not sell that well.

Imagine your typical F150 driver putting his truck balls on an EV F150 only to have them zapped and you see Ford's problem.

Green light for anti-labor

[damn_registrars]

The current Ford CEO is nothing like Henry Ford and looks forward to trying to further his interests without union labor. He sees this as Trump giving him the green light to attempt to do so. After all the big three can now look at the American (located) plants for Asian (headquartered) companies that are mostly staffed by non-union workers and whine that they can't "compete" unless they can reduce wages, skirt pension, and provide reduced benefits. Considering the goon that Trump wants to place in charge of the Department of Labor, it's game on.

Re:Green light for anti-labor

[mutantSushi]

Nothing like Henry Ford? You mean your whitewashed wishful thinking version of Henry Ford? Ford was the biggest fascist, the biggest and most violent hold-out against union organizing. Sure he finally folded in 1941, but that is hardly reason to hold him up as some example, nor to erase history.

Re:Green light for anti-labor

[Major Blud]

The current Ford CEO is nothing like Henry Ford and looks forward to trying to further his interests without union labor.

I'm not sure I follow you. Henry Ford fought unionization to the bitter end. Ford didn't sign a UAW contract until 1941, just a few years before he died. They were the last of the big three to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Take a look at who the UAW supported in this election (and the past ones as well). Considering that Michigan went Trump, they may want to reconsider who they support versus who their members have in mind if they wish to stay relevant.
https://www.opensecrets.org/or...

Re:Green light for anti-labor

[Anonymous Coward]

If they whine, Trump can say "bah, Asians are now taxed for their unfair advantages. You want that tax too?"

Re:Green light for anti-labor

[Anonymous Coward]

You left our the Henry Ford was also a renowned writer.

Re:Green light for anti-labor

[david_thornley]

Michigan was close, and the UAW members may well have heavily supported Clinton but been outweighed by other people in the state (or perhaps Detroit inefficiency and/or vote fraud played a part).

Let's keep our eye on the ball ...

[CaptainDork]

... it's the little round thing called, "non-fossil fuel cars."

It's not a win for Trump.

It's a poke in the eye.

Re:Let's keep our eye on the ball ...

[WillAffleckUW]

... it's the little round thing called, "non-fossil fuel cars."

It's not a win for Trump.

It's a poke in the eye.

Exactly. This was as a result of the 33 climate accord US states and the Canadian feds and provinces requiring they locally build EV trucks SUVs and cars and hybrids.

We're winning. We are the market. When we say Jump, they say How high? Then we have an MJ party to celebrate.

We are the economy.

Adapt.

Re:Let's keep our eye on the ball ...

[iggymanz]

what the heck? were there even 200,000 electric cars sold in the USA in 2016? The "market" for electric cars isn't here, it's in China and Europe.

Re:Let's keep our eye on the ball ...

[WillAffleckUW]

That was then. this is now. We run the economy. We changed the requirement for EV or hybrid fleet vehicles while you were sleeping.

It's 2017. Keep up.

Re:Let's keep our eye on the ball ...

[iggymanz]

17 million internal combustion engine cars will be sold in the USA this year. You and your imaginary friends aren't making a dent here in the near future.

Re:Let's keep our eye on the ball ...

[CaptainDork]

That's shareholder-think:

EV is far away ...

Global warming is far away ...

Re:Let's keep our eye on the ball ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The "market" for electric cars isn't here, it's in China and Europe.

Yes, so if Ford wants to export, they need to have electric cars. Good for "trade balance".

Re:Let's keep our eye on the ball ...

[iggymanz]

no I'm just stating reality. electric vehicles will take off quickly and be HUGE in some smarter (and bigger) countries, so in the end as far as global carbon load it won't matter what the USA does.

More power to Ford (best US V-8)

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Nothing touches the Mustang smallblock (race engine really) & Mr. Trump (both = best of the BEST & we're lucky to have 'em!).

* Coming from the BEST producer of hosts files that give you more speed, security, reliability & anonymity than ANY other SINGLE "so-called 'solution'" out there, bar-none, doing MORE for less (resource use, security issues, inefficiency OR being 'sold out' to NOT WORK by default (adblock)) - NEW VERSION TODAY too:

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-5 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

APK

P.S.=> BOTH Ford Motor & Mr. Trump make me PROUD to be a U.S. Citizen - they're not taking a day off & doing more for their U.S. constituency... apk

Good Job Ford

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be good to see some money stay in the US for a change.

Re:Good Job Ford

[fbobraga]

It will be good to see some money stay in the US for a change.

near to "Trump's direct influence area" (AKA his deep, withhold unlawfully, pockets)!

you fa1l it!

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD had long we get there with EFNet, and apply to be about do

Great way to invite MORE Mexicans into the US!

[Theovon]

Trump’s biggest complaint about Mexico is all the people sneaking illegally into the US and then becoming a “burden on the economy.” Now, I can understand wanting to bring jobs home that are currently in places like China. But the Chinese don’t sneak across a border into the US. By limiting trade with Mexico, this hurts their economy and makes people want EVEN MORE to escape to the US. On the other hand, perhaps investing a little in the Mexican economy might make some of their people WANT to stay there, no?

Re:Great way to invite MORE Mexicans into the US!

[MightyMartian]

That was the entire intent of extending Canada-US trade agreements to include Mexico; the theory being a prosperous neighbor is a lot better than an impoverished one. If the US basically decides to kick Mexico in the balls and walk away with the jobs that will help Mexico into the community of developed nations, then it's simply going to feed the need of so many to cross the border legally or illegally, as well as assuring that Mexico remains politically and socially chaotic.

But when you're a demagogue using fear to gain power, you need scapegoats, and Mexicans seem to be the scapegoat-of-choice of Trump (well along with anyone from the Middle East).

Re:Great way to invite MORE Mexicans into the US!

[guruevi]

No, that's what the NAFTA experiment tried, the opposite thing happened, migration of the Mexican people has quadrupled (4% of the US population is now an illegal immigrant) since where it had been relatively steady for decades (~1%).

Re:Great way to invite MORE Mexicans into the US!

[bongey]

Um incorrect, the actual Mexican minimum wage in USD has gone DOWN. It was 5 USD per DAY in 1993, today those 80 pesos PER DAY not HOUR that they raised to is worth 3.80 USD now. Yeah NAFTA was great for Mexico, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12...

Re:Great way to invite MORE Mexicans into the US!

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to keep Mexicans out by making Mexico a nicer place. (That is for the Mexicans to do themselves.) People sneaking across the borders may be stopped with hunting permits and "payment per head". As a side benefit, all the psychos and serial killers move to the border regions, away from the rest.

Too harsh? Not for someone who thinks it is unfair that only the others have torture . . .

More power to Ford (best US V-8)

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Nothing touches the Mustang smallblock (race engine really) & Mr. Trump (both = best of the BEST & we're lucky to have 'em!).

* Coming from the BEST producer of hosts files that give you more speed, security, reliability & anonymity than ANY other SINGLE "so-called 'solution'" out there, bar-none, doing MORE for less (resource use, security issues, inefficiency OR being 'sold out' to NOT WORK by default (adblock)) - NEW VERSION TODAY too:

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-5 32/64-bit https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22APK+Hosts+File+Engine%22+and+%22start64%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/

APK

P.S.=> BOTH Ford Motor & Mr. Trump make me PROUD to be a U.S. Citizen - they're not taking a day off & doing more for their U.S. constituency... apk

This was the West Coast and Canada demand actually

[WillAffleckUW]

It was actually a business decision based on the combined US and Canadian states and provinces demanding locally built EV and hybrid fleet vehicles in most of the US economy (CA,OR,WA, and the NE states) and Canada (all the provinces and feds) that made this happen.

Comrade T had nothing to do with this decision.

We pushed.

We got results.

Not the God-Emperor.

Not sure what to make of this.

[mmell]

Fields revealed that Ford would be canceling a previously announced $1.6 billion-production facility in Mexico

I wonder how much fellatio DJT had to give to make that happen? Surely a massive tax break of some kind.

Ford plans to invest $4.5 billion in electric vehicle production by 2020.

Oh, wait . . . never mind.

Reagan's Questioning

[Anonymous Coward]

Reporter: "Mr. President, were you aware of the weapons sale that Col Oliver North had arranged between Iran and the Contras in the basement of the Whitehouse?"

Regan: "Basement?"

Just strategy - Trump up every American build

[RhettLivingston]

Companies have never stopped building in America. In the past few years, they've had to build and modernize a lot of facilities to get the production back to its current record levels without rehiring the workers lost in the 2009 time frame. Yet the net increase in factory jobs has been negligible. Here's a great chart showing what has happened.

That will continue. Actually, it would be surprising if we don't start seeing the jobs go lower while output goes up.

The difference is that now, all of those projects will be highly publicized and touted as due to Trump so that Trump can reward them with tax breaks they weren't getting before for the same thing.

Hybrid Mustang? I guess ford's the first

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Given that there's 3 super cars that are hybrids(McLaren P1, Porsche 918, Ferrari La Ferrari) I'm very interested how the first hybrid sport/muscle/pony car regular people can afford will turn out. Not expecting super car performance but if done right it could be quite a car.

Good news.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jobs are good news, especially when they're not paid for via bailout or stimulus.

Obamatrons HOOOOOO!

And you wouldn't believe it

[SuperKendall]

Meanwhile, a city in Mexico just lost $1.6B of direct investment

Told you Mexico would pay for that wall.

Supercars like koenigsegg use LS6?

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: It's the engine block/heads they initially selected + from what I understand, stangs win most streetraces typically (per traderags, motorshows etc.).

Yes, Vettes used Chevy stuff - but what about TRUE 'supercars'?

Ford also INVENTED the single part cast V-8 that was affordable too back in iirc, 1932 (had oil pickup issues on turns to they put in baffles in the pan & problem solved, fast) - thus chevy = imitation (even though I owned a good one, see below).

APK

P.S.=> Used to be a 'motorhead' in my "misguided youth" (had an 1972 SS Chevelle I sold to get more "$" to live @ school, wish I hadn't) & like Chevy enough, but race tech IS in the ford smallblock "boss 302" (4.6L-5.0L) motor like (iirc) overhead cams (no stupid pushrod design losing 30% going from circular to linear & more moving parts for breakdown), roller rockers & valve tappets, headers (tubular exhaust) etc. - Chevy MAY have that now, but I they didn't put it in streetable V-8's in the 70's-90's afaik (& IF you have time? What the hell - fill me in IF they do now - thanks, BUT if they do? They're mere imitation paper roses)... apk

Re:Supercars like koenigsegg use LS6?

[HornWumpus]

Ford switched to overhead CAM V8 'performance' engines in the 96 mustang. But the first ones sucked BALLS, bad. 4.6 two valve per cylinder engines, weaker than the previous 5.0 pushrod motor, especially when you factor in cost of tuner parts, (which are still very cheap for the old 5.0).

GM LS engines are just stronger than the Ford Coyotes (being bigger, the Ford revs higher). They are both awesome by old V8 standards.

IIRC The first street 4 valve OHC American V8 was in the original ZR-1 'vette. Which was late 80s IIRC. Not a mass produced engine, made by Mercury Marine for GM IIRC. Strangely, _Mercury_ Marine has been using GM engines forever.

I once saw an Italian V8 w OHCs and 4 valves at a car show, it was from the 1930s. Of course the metallurgy of the day meant it couldn't have been at all reliable. But when you consider that most cars still had side valves/flat heads at the time, I was impressed.

The rest of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

All those cars will be made in 100% automated robotic plants, resulting in a net gain of about a dozen US jobs. Here's what the unskilled laborers don't understand: if your job can be done cheaper in the US by a robot than the minimum wage for you, than your job doesn't have to be offshored for you to be out of work! Maybe you should to whatever it takes to get trained for a profession that can't get offshored, e.g. RN or hospitality industry.

Re:The rest of the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. This is what the Trumpsters don't understand. They think the future is in manufacturing, but foreign nations will always beat us in manufacturing. Always. The future is automation, period. We should be developing the new tech to sell to other countries, not building factories to make crap that someone else could make for half the cost. Most of Trump's supporters are baby-boomers who can only think in 1950's terms, when Fords were cool and manufacturing was king. Ford sucks now, and manufacturing is now pointless, and the rest of the world will surpass us in tech innovation while we sit around building factories like dipshits. Technology is the key to the future, it's always has been and always will be.

Alternate headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Ford: We've done nothing on EVs since Magna gifted us the Focus EV conversion years ago, but we're going to get started on something any day now.

mod parent down, RTFA

[scatbomb]

Trump seems very talented at getting his name into headlines about decisions that have nothing to do with him

Except for the part in the article where Ford's CEO is quoted as saying: "We're encouraged by the pro-growth policies of President Trump," Fields said when announcing the investment shift from Mexico to the Flat Rock facility. Earlier in the day, the CEO told CNN he views the investment as a "vote of confidence" in the president-elect.

I have read the linked article and article in WSJ and WashPost

OK, so did you miss that part, ignore it, or what?

Re:mod parent down, RTFA

[Xyrus]

The part you missed and ignored is the obvious doublespeak from the Ford CEO.

"Pro-growth" policies when republicans are in power mean "fuck over everyone not already independently wealthy". You can bet the so-called republicans, Trump, and his cabinent of self-serving sociopaths already have a wonderful plan to gut unions, worker protections, minimum wage, etc.

For a little taste of what's to come, just check out the "awesome" plan they have for saving social security. It's absolutely fucking brilliant. It starts by cutting taxes on the rich so there's less money, then they fuck over the millennials wholesale by slashing their benefits.

But whatever. In the post-fact world you can believe whatever you want.

Re:mod parent down, RTFA

[retroworks]

Ford CEO certainly applauded Trump's pro-business posture. But the articles CLEARLY state that the Ford Focus and Escort jobs are going to Hermasillo (a different Mexico factory) and that the jobs in Michigan are for a completely unrelated electric vehicle which was NEVER going to be made in Mexico. Is Ford CEO smart to play it as a "thanks for lower regulations and taxes" move? Perhaps so. But the Michigan jobs (electric vehicles) were NEVER going to Mexico, and the cancelled Mexico plant operations are moving to Hermasillo in Sonora Mexico.

Re:mod parent down, RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

"fuck over everyone"... "cabinet of self-serving sociopaths" .... "fuck over he millennial wholesale".... "post-fact"

Must be hard to be always outraged by nothing. How do you see straight in the morning? Did you say the same thing with the other self serving sociopaths?

BTW, as a millennial. Fuck you. I don't want your help or sympathy. Worry about your own damned house and don't bitch on behalf of someone capable of doing it themselves. No one likes bitches by proxy. especially disingenuous fucks like you that moral signal how bored they are with their life

Re:mod parent down, RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

To me, that sounds like it is an attempt to curry political favor by announcing outsourcing decisions in a certain way. Or worse, they are just dressing up their outsourcing in a way that keeps them out of Trump's sights. I see the plan: offset the relocation of existing production to Mexico with an "announcement" of the planned production of non-existent vehicles in the US. Then later, once things are up and running in Mexico, cancel those non-existent vehicles. Trump himself pulled this sort of promise-and-back-out-later kind of thing all the time as a real estate investor.

Re:mod parent down, RTFA

[david_thornley]

Since when are CEO public statements necessarily truthful? The CEO might have been wanting to butter up Trump. I'm calling that doubtful at best.

A CEO of a large company should be aware that the Trump presidency is going to be very uncertain in its effects.

Thanks Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it time to make the sarcastic "Thanks Trump" meme yet?

FORD spells the end to Elon Musk Inc.

[Anonymous Coward]

By by Elon. Looser!

Ja ja

Re:FORD spells the end to Elon Musk Inc.

[fbobraga]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out of WH

[dfenstrate]

Maybe it costs 1.6 billion to build a new factory in Mexico, and $700 million modernizing an existing plant in the United States. Under the previous rules they thought were going to be in place, they would have recouped the $900 million dollar difference. Trump's plan is to incentivize building in the US, disincentivize building elsewhere- and this changes the risks and calculations associated with the project.
So I wouldn't say the 'Narrative is clearly not true.' With Gruber, Rhodes, and Clinton continuously lying to the America public I can see where you'd get the idea that a 'narrative' would be pushed regardless of the facts on the ground, but please consider that not everyone operates that way.

You moved goalposts man... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I was talking common-man buyable motors (not ones you note) 1st of all.

You didn't answer my question though - DO SUPERCARS like Koenigsegg use Chevy? I know they used the Ford 5.0 initially!

Plus - isn't the LS6 bigblock & w/ larger stroke? Explains rpm/rev possibles partially (that's not apples to apples then) & I was restricting us to MASS PRODUCTION street motors man...

* Thanks for the feedback - "live & learn" & I'll take your word on it - why not - you seem fairly confident enough + probably know more about rod engines more than I do!

Thus - U R KING MOTORHEAD! Quoting Arnold from "Predator" - "U R 1 UGLY MOFO" but know your shit!

* In honor of my coronation of you as "KING MOTORHEAD" (can't put in the 'umlauts', afaik /. doesn't do unicode & extended charsets)? A tune:

ACE OF SPADES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWB5JZRGl0U/

Just 4U in your honor!

APK

P.S.=> Cost efficacy on Ford is excellent though (they do win tons of streetraces) & do chevys now have headers, roller work on cams, rocker arms & such too? What is cost differential?? HUGE iirc - Vette vs. Stang is large (roush even is still lower vs. high-end vettes)... apk

Re:You moved goalposts man... apk

[HornWumpus]

LS6 is a 'smallblock' 454. The price of a crate LS6 or Coyote is pretty high (IIRC in the $20k neighborhood, addressing you 'common-man buyable' question), but as I say, they arrive thumping.

IIRC the original Koenigsegg used a blown chevy rat. I believe they are using a custom, blown, big block aluminum 454 (race motor derived from a rat) now.

The ZR-1 motor was hand built, but they built a lot of them, grey area r.e. mass production.

Chevy has roller rockers standard, they all more or less need to (along with 6 bolt mains) and awesome crankshafts/rod/pistons (LS6 has factory titanium connecting rods), and Chevy has used headers and rollers in stock high performance application since the 60s.

As to cost effectiveness. It's pretty hard to beat the old pushrod 5.0 Ford motor or the old mice. Depending on how many HP you are going for, older motors have much cheaper parts, but lower limits. The old rule of thumb was that if you exceed about 1.3 hp/inch^3 you will have poor reliability and life. Stock motors exceed this by a lot these days and come with warranties (that will be void if the computer logs over revs though).

That will change as warehouses run out of parts. Already not so true for mice.

Roush/Calloway/Hennessy/AMG etc are ridiculously overpriced tuner packages, for people who want to impress their neighbors. You can do the same thing yourself and pay about 1/4 the price difference between stock and the dealer tuner car (unless you fuckup, then it will cost you _much_ more. But realistically, who tunes on brand new cars, still under warranty?). The dealer tuner car will be collectable, while the home tuned car will not.

Lets not forget mopars either. Lots of strong motors everywhere, even the English and Italians are putting 'truck motors' * into their sports cars now. Of course all the English sports car companies are now owned by Ford europe and Fiat owns Chrysler.

* Enzo said: 'I like American cars, I just don't understand why they put truck motors in all of them'. Americans respond: 'We don't understand why you put sewing machine motors in your cars'. Proceed to demonstrate that a Pontiac GTO (judge) is faster than a Ferrari GTO (on an oval). Then proceed to do it again around Monza.

Obama: We'll bankrupt any new coal plants

[nicoleb_x]

Seems like familiar tactics from the bully pulpit.

Re:A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out of

[Aighearach]

There are a whole bunch of logical problems with your fantasy. Yeah, sure, before they didn't mind wasting $900M, but now since the President hand-waved and said that Congress will make a bunch of new (totally unspecified) rules, they're suddenly happy with it. That just doesn't work as an explanation. It is plain horse-shit. Your reply had zero content, zero logic. All you did is present a nonsense narrative that is clearly not true.

Obviously, some true series of events happened. But they're not what is claimed in the story, and they're not what you made up either.

Re:A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out of

[dfenstrate]

We're both engaging in conjecture, you seem upset that my conjecture is different from yours. Perhaps you'd be happier on something that isn't so much a discussion board as a proclamation board?

Re:A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out of

[Aighearach]

Even a business 101 class would inform you that predictability is an important business concern. Businesses do not do knee-jerk reactions that cost $900M based on new rules that haven't even been made! That's complete nonsense. No conjecture required to reject that as an explanation. Notice, I didn't actually engage in conjecture; I'm not saying why they did it, I'm saying exactly that we don't know why. We don't have enough information to make a reasonable claim, but we do have enough information to reject the stated claims.

Fact finding

[s.petry]

I realize fact finding is hard in the modern age of the Internet, but the leaders of both Mexico and Canada both stated that they are willing to renegotiate NAFTA with the Trump administration. If they don't find common ground, the treaty dies. We have plenty of history of this scenario playing out with various results (some positive, some negative).

Assuming the agreements are favorable to the US and your allegation that Congress would not approve are true, I expect we will see a large change in Congress in the next election.

If your point was that Trump is not a dictator I would agree, but if that was your point it was extremely poor in representation.

Re: A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out o

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost like one of the largest auto makers in the world wants to stay on good terms with one of the most powerful men in the world.

Taking your suggestion to look at the historical

[raymorris]

> However, do not delude yourself or anyone else that GOP == "no new taxes", just because W chanted it like an idiot throughout his election cycle most assuredly does not make it true. Look at the historical record, in practice the GOP raises taxes just as much

Let's do look at the historical record. Here are the actual numbers, the average federal tax rate for all households:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org...

You may notice that the total federal tux burden doesn't hasn't actually changed that much since 1979 - they just move things around, without changing the total. Rates for the lowest-income quintile have consistently gone down over the last 25 years, from 8% to 1.5%.

A summary by president for your convenience:
Obama: No significant change (but huge debt which will require future taxes)
GW Bush: average tax rate reduced from 21% to 17.3%
Clinton: No change
GHW Bush: No significant change
Reagan: Reduced from 22% to 21%

Two presidents have had tax changes of more that half of a percent, GW Bush and Ronald Reagan. Both reduced taxes.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Corruption should be occurring due to this myopic focus on a single company, similar to how the recent bailouts benefit some financial companies, while others were unable to survive. Trump appears to be bringing light to specific companies randomly and ignoring others. The approach isn't methodical at all, just meant to be marketing or propaganda.

Re:Taking your suggestion to look at the historica

[JoeMerchant]

You may notice that the total federal tux burden doesn't hasn't actually changed that much since 1979 - they just move things around, without changing the total. Rates for the lowest-income quintile have consistently gone down over the last 25 years, from 8% to 1.5%.

A summary by president for your convenience:
Obama: No significant change (but huge debt which will require future taxes)
GW Bush: average tax rate reduced from 21% to 17.3%
Clinton: No change
GHW Bush: No significant change
Reagan: Reduced from 22% to 21%

Two presidents have had tax changes of more that half of a percent, GW Bush and Ronald Reagan. Both reduced taxes.

Taxes for who? Bush's "base" - sure, their taxes went down. Capital Gains taxes, sure they got reduced by Regan. Workers in the Flint auto making factories, not so much.

Ford, GM, Chrysler were basically broke

[Anonymous Coward]

Ford, GM, and Chrysler were basically broke in 2009, their investments in Mexico saved them.

You ignore externalities. Thus worthless analysis.

[Anonymous Coward]

You ignore externalities. Pollution, safety, health, medical, and other costs not born by the corporations raping the environment and abusing workers.

Thus your worthless analysis.

Re: A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Germany doesn't have a free trade agreement and they still have a larger trade deficit than Mexico, which is mostly foreign-owned producers. Ford has a karge market in Mexico too, the largest of all latin america. They are not stupid.

Re: A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany does not have a trade deficit and never had one in recent history. They have one of the largest trade surpluses in the world.

Re:A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out of

[Anonymous Coward]

Under the previous rules they thought were going to be in place, they would have recouped the $900 million dollar difference. Trump's plan is to incentivize building in the US, disincentivize building elsewhere- and this changes the risks and calculations associated with the project.

The problem with that narrative is that Trump doesn't have a plan.
He may have intentions (that appears to vary depending on the last word spoken) but he has yet to state a plan.
It would be crazy to do a $700 million investment based on that when you can wait a couple of weeks and see what Trump intends to do.
But who knows, perhaps they have made a deal with Trump under the table.

Re:A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out of

[Anonymous Coward]

"disincentivize" - LOL.
I think the word you're looking for is "penalise', but then, you are American, aren't you...
Can't think of the word you want? Just put "dis" in front of another word, and create a completely new word that nobody has ever heard of before!

Re:This was the West Coast and Canada demand actua

[HanzoSpam]

The CEO of Ford disagrees with you.

Ford is doing the right thing... I hope

[crvtec]

I'm not going to comment on Ford doing this because of Trump or not, but I applaud them regardless for being the only major US based vehicle manufacturer that didn't take a 'bailout'. I hope this works out for them. (Yes, I own shares of Ford, and even if it costs me a bit more, I'll be buying cars from them in the future simply because they *didn't* F up)

Love my C-MAX Hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

A nice crossover, it gets 40MPG, has 10,000mi oil changes and it actually fun to drive - plus since they initially overstated the MPG and barely market them you can buy them dirt cheap.

This is less news than the headline sounds.

[atrex]

Ford did some simple supply and demand economics calculations and decided it was more profitable to expand their production of highly profitable big trucks and SUVs in their current US based plants than it was to open up a new small cars plant in Mexico. Instead of opening a new plant, they're just cutting their overall small cars production so that their existing Mexico plant can manufacture both car lines. Honestly this wouldn't even be a news worthy headline if people weren't trying to use it to prop up Trump.

Re:You ignore externalities. Thus worthless analys

[ranton]

You ignore externalities. Pollution, safety, health, medical, and other costs not born by the corporations raping the environment and abusing workers.

If anything, externalities boost my argument because nations such as China don't deal with them as effectively and broadly as the US does. Offshoring on the other hand provides enormous improvements to these externalities because it gives incentives for developing countries to improve more rapidly. The US will have much greater global impact by enticing all nations to improve than it could ever have just focusing on itself only.

Re:A BS Narrative? Rhodes is getting kicked out of

[david_thornley]

I understand your conjecture as saying that Ford was going to spend $1.6G in Mexico rather than spending $700M in the US, for essentially the same thing, before changing its decision. It seems very odd that Ford would spend $900M extra just to locate a plant in Mexico rather than the US. Labor costs would be less in Mexico, but by that much?

Aighearach's conjecture is that there were two unrelated projects, one costing $1.6G and one costing $700M, and they dropped the first and are proceeding with the second instead. This avoids having to explain why plants in Mexico are so much more profitable than plants in the US. The $700M project looks to be higher tech, and more suited for doing in the US.

The problem with attributing a major change to Trump's election is that we don't know what's going to happen. Trump has said he'll do something to discourage sending jobs abroad. This is probably not good for his business interests, so I don't know if he'll actually do it. (One thing we know about Trump is that he's a big liar.) If he does propose something, I don't know how Congress will react. It's mostly controlled by mainstream Republicans, who might or might not support Trump's initiatives, and who are unlikely to want to pass such a proposal.

History repeats itself

[Anonymous Coward]

History repeats itself (and so do I)

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry-ford-grand-cross-1938/

But but TRUMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump won. Get over it. Trump is parading the 800 or so jobs he "saved" around like he's the king or some shit. Why do you dwell on the past? You got what you wanted. Own that shit.

No, FUCK YOU

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, ya hypocritical bastard! It was totally ok for you to flipping the fuck out for 8 years screaming about Obama coming to get your guns and all the scary muslims around every corner who wanted to behead you and fuck your ugly wife but now it's us who are the delusional ones? Yeah, you can go fuck right off. You don't have to worry about help from me. There are plenty who actually want the help so again, fuck right off.

Electric Ford

[DarthVain]

OK when I read the list of cars I here was my initial reaction...

Electric Mustang? It will have a range of 10km. More likely is it will have two settings, a "Sport" with a range of 10km, and a "Normal" which will have the range of a normal electric car I suppose or slightly worse.

Electric Police Car? My first vision of a police chase against a combustion car, where they just have to outlast the police to out distance them and they run out of juice... Might make a good premise for a bank heist movie chase or something.

Electric Transit Van? OK that just makes perfect sense really, probably need extra capacity for distance and weight likely though.

Electric F-150 Truck? OK first I thought it was a stupid idea, sure lots of torque but figure the capacity drain will be excessive, However the line "powerful enough to stand-in for on-site generators in a pinch" was not something I thought of, and is actually pretty useful. Could even see it in heavier use in contractors and the like. Anyway maybe not such a bad idea.

Incorrect: Koenigsegg used Ford originally

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & proof https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22koenigsegg%22+and+%22ford%22&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1/ & Ford uses headers, roller overhead cams & iirc rocker arms too stock on the street in the smallblock 4.6-5.0L (I wouldn't have stated it outright IF I wasn't cocksure of it)

* ... & yea, I know you can build up a motor/car yourself for considerably less vs. buying them "hot-rodded" (iirc, that was the original premise behind "hotrodders" - taking what they had & making it better).

APK

P.S.=> I used to be "into it" myself (still am but I have bills to pay now on homes so it's restricted to putting on dual exhausts + cold-air intakes on V-6's now - NOT the same as V8 by a longshot) & doing PC "hotrodding"'s NOT that dissimilar (it's cheaper too, lol)... apk

Re:Incorrect: Koenigsegg used Ford originally

[HornWumpus]

You can 'hotrod' for pretty cheap these days.

I fell into my first Ford in 20+ years recently. 400+hp 94 mustang for less than 3 grand. Less than 10k miles on the motor. I removed all the visible 'blue ovals of shame', fixed a dozen little things, tuned the suspension, replaced the convertible top, installed a racing radiator and put in a lower gear/fatter axle (04) rear end (the kid had drifted the car into curb and broke the old one, also lost his license and was going to have the car confiscated next 'pull over', hence sold it cheap.)

Next I need Cobra wheels and tires. With all that I'm still less than 5 grand into the car, and a fair number of hours.

Polyurethane bushing are a bitch and a half (actually it's getting the worn out rubber ones out, you need a hydraulic press and a good set of drifts/blocks). Next time I'll just buy the Chinese tubular steel suspension links with urethane bushings pre installed, about $20 more than just the bushings.

I can also say good things about hot rodding underpowered Hondas. In a V8 you are constantly lifting, you can drive a Civic like the stig and still be reasonably safe in traffic (assuming you know how to focus on driving). Strangely the Mustang is cheaper to insure than the Civic.