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Comment by stellar678 | Hacker News Reader

<< Ford sells that many F-Series trucks in the U.S. about every three weeks. >>

This is why Ford is unlikely to succeed at pivoting into the electric car market. The power and pull inside their company doesn't want them to. It will take superhuman leadership to overcome that force.

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An electric f150 is kind of the dream actually. Electric is great for fleet vehicles and it has all the low end torque your frame can handle. Plus trucks have plenty of space to put batteries, under the bed, between the bed and the cab, that can be nice and rectangular. Electric drive train means more effective ground clearance for a given ride height too because you don't need a drive shaft or exhaust. Regenerative brakes are probably better than engine braking too, at least from a wear and tear perspective.

Start with a hybrid Ranger billed as "torque+" marketing slogan "it'll tow a mountain"

Also the ability to run 240v + 120v right off the inverter for the pack would be a huge thing for contractors. I know many then end up hauling a genset out just because quite a few sites don't have dedicated power.

I'll take all that weight on the rear axle of my RWD ranger any day. 98% of the time i have nothing substantial and have to take care not to burnout.

That makes no sense. Companies seek to be viable in the future. If Ford or GM feel that an electric car is on the horizon and that car will eat their (ICE) lunch, they will pivot.

By your logic Tesla would have been locked out of the VC/investment market due to Big Oil. Money flows like water.

Individuals within a company seek to be viable in the future, which often leads them to reject innovation that might endanger their role.

History is littered with companies that refused to pivot into new technology until far later than they should have, because they were too heavily invested in the old way. American car companies suffered from this in the 70s, where they got thrashed by competition from small imports for quite a while before they could be convinced to stop concentrating on land yachts.

Bureaucracy goes out the window when you have an activist investor asking you why you're ignoring clear market trends.

By the time the trends become that clear, you're often years behind.

We are behind, but a competent investor isn't.

Then how did all these companies end up in this position in the past?

There are a lot of examples of companies which, even when directed to do so by their CEO, were unable to pivot to technologies rising up from smaller markets. The term has been overloaded to hell, but that's disruption.

I would highly recommend the book "The Innovator's Dilemma." It provides case studies of disruptive innovations across many different industries -- from farm tech to disk drives.

> Companies seek to be viable in the future. If Ford or GM feel that an electric car is on the horizon and that car will eat their (ICE) lunch, they will pivot.

I guess you could say the same for Kodak, Blockbuster, and Borders?

“The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource-allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies: listening carefully to customers; tracking competitors’ actions carefully; and investing resources to design and build higher-performance, higher-quality products that will yield greater profit. These are the reasons why great firms stumbled or failed when confronted with disruptive technological change.”[0]

[0] - https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1468535-the-innovator-...

I've read the book. None of those companies would even acknowledge their competition. Ford/GM/all other ICE companies acknowledge both Tesla, and the fact that there is a clear runway on oil.

IMO GM is doing a better job of it. While they do have a compliance car (Spark EV), they've also got the Volt and Bolt, and both will be 50 state cars.

Ford has primarily focused on hybrids and there EV offerings are either fleet-only or compliance cars.

GM basically stopped selling the Spark EV already -- 11 were sold in the US in the first quarter.

http://insideevs.com/march-2017-plug-electric-vehicle-sales-...

I wouldn't say they didn't acknowledge them, they just didn't know how to fight them.

> None of those companies would even acknowledge their competition. Ford/GM/all other ICE companies acknowledge both Tesla, and the fact that there is a clear runway on oil.

Source?

The bolt. Billions of dollars into self driving technology.

Oh wait sorry this is HN. Ya, those idiots at ford will die to the great Elon. hahahahaha any company older than 25 years is worthless old school idiocy and will die within 5 years of a startup coming in.

look up kodak and the digital camera. They had the tech in the 70s but didn't want it to cannibalize their film sales. They're bankrupt now.

> Companies seek to be viable in the future.

Companies seek to outperform themselves relative to the last quarter and year. Long term strategy like this takes a backseat, if it gets attention at all. It certainly doesn't get the luxury of a whole company pivot that could tank short term value.

Need proof? Look at all of the American companies that got caught with their pants down shipping nothing but bigger SUVs when the price of oil shot up back in 2008.

If you were running one of those companies, would you sell SUVs that make you 10k in profit each or an equal number of small cars that make 2k in profit each?

Ford has much more private interests (the Ford family) than other car companies so tends to think more long-term. Remember they weathered 2008 without needing a bailout.

They've also ditched the high-end SUV market right as that market exploded all over the world, thus missed out on massive profits because they no longer sold an Expedition. They openly admit to ceding the market to GM in their annual letters to shareholders specifically because they don't see gas-guzzling SUVs as long-term investments.

They also lead the market in fleet and industry-oriented products. They offer both technology and core-products designed to keep the incredibly lucrative fleet buyers happy.

In this regard, Ford is akin to Microsoft: their consumer products aren't mind blowing, but their corporate products are so well entrenched that they will be a practical ATM for the next decades. Ford sells six times as many F150s as Toyota sells Tundras and they own the entire small cargo van market.

The electric Focus is competitive with the Nissan Leaf, at least on paper.

I think the economics aren't really there yet for them to bother with an electric platform (vs retrofitting electric drive into an existing platform). If they thought it made sense, they would be able to be producing at large volumes in a few years.

The EU has fleet CO₂ emission limits; cars and vans which produce more CO₂ than the regulated amount have a 'tax' that the manufacturer must pay.

That's an incentive not only to produce an electric car, but to produce one that people buy instead of buying petrol/diesel cars.

https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_...

Ford is unique because it's controlled largely by the Ford family still, all of whom having a vested interest in the long-term profitability of Ford. If someone demonstrates to them that pivoting to electric vehicles is the best long-term strategy for the company, even at the expense of short-term profitability, they will do it.

Also, don't discount the importance of the cashflow from pickups. The only reason Chrysler and Dodge still exist is because of their anchorage to Jeep and RAM. Ford could eliminate their entire car division and still retain like 80% of their profits.

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