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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.
Go Trumperor!!!!!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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.
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?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
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.
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.
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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
Gently reply
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?
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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."
Aren't you guys supposed to be experiencing cognitive dissonance over your loyalties to fossil fuels about now?
Someone had to do it.
Because we all know that billion dollar investments from multi-billion dollar corporations can be changed overnight on the whim of a Tweet.
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Pleeeeeze, Mr President, I can't stand any more winning, all this winning, I'd like to take a break from all this winning.....
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.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Which is 700 more than they would have. The 700m is NOT just for the jobs - it's for the PLANT.
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?
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
... 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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
LS6 is better in every way/number.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I wonder how much fellatio DJT had to give to make that happen? Surely a massive tax break of some kind.
Oh, wait . . . never mind.
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.
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
Reagan's entire legacy is fake news.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
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.
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.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Meanwhile, a city in Mexico just lost $1.6B of direct investment
Told you Mexico would pay for that wall.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
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.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Sorry, apparent new problem. Honda's six bangers have been bad this way for a solid decade+.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
On the upside, hopefully the mounts aren't $300+
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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?
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
My Nissan was assembled in the USA by Ford, they did a great job too.
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.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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.
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.
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.
Seems like familiar tactics from the bully pulpit.
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.
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?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
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.
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.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
That's shareholder-think:
EV is far away ...
Global warming is far away ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
> 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.
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.
What about world market share?
I dunno, that sounds like sucky mileage. Maybe a lighter truck would do better for commuting.
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.
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.
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.
Badging.
And apparently it works, or you wouldn't have had a comment to reply to.
Kid-proof tablet..
>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 ?
Teslas are great cars!
The CEO of Ford disagrees with you.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
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)
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.
near to "Trump's direct influence area" (AKA his deep, withhold unlawfully, pockets)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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.
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/...
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.
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.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
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.
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.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
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.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.