Ford to eliminate 7k jobs, or 10% of workforce | Hacker News Reader

Ford to eliminate 7k jobs, or 10% of workforce

marketwatch.com

39 pointsspking9 comments

Well this should be no surprise. A lot of office workers do really dumb tasks that can be easily automated.

In order to maximize profits you cut your workforce. We will see this happen more frequently as automation continues and it will probably be different from industrial revolution.

Do you really need to buy a Ford car in 2019 ?

I mean if nobody has any jobs, why would anybody buy a Ford car ?

Weirdly they've had decent low end small cars in countries other than the US. It's very much "the US loves giant cars, so we won't sell any small cars there, even if they're popular overseas". I'm not saying anything about quality, as quality at the low end of the small car segment appears to be much more ... interesting? .. than at the high end.

Well they announced that they were stopping making cars correct? I assumed this was coming

EVs will crush revenues on maintenance, servicing, and spares, since there are fewer and simpler parts.

These revenue lines are very high-margin.

Its probable that one major global auto company will fail in the next decade.

> revenues on maintenance, servicing, and spares

The OEM doesn't make money on replacing parts or service. The Tier-1 / aftermarket suppliers and the mechanics do.

Exactly. But the Tesla saga has taught me that the technology sector knows very little about the auto industry.

Definitely, I saw this from working on hybrids when I was a mechanic. The transmissions were simpler, the engine rarely needed any work since they ran less than a gas only car. They barely needed any brake work since the electric motor does most of the stopping.

A full electric pretty much eliminates all the work besides replacing tires and replacing the brakes maybe once in the car's lifetime.

Some customers with older evs will need new batteries but the price of a battery is so expensive that dealers won't have a lot of room for markup and it only takes a few hours to replace one.

>These revenue lines are very high-margin

Any source for that? Auto repair is extremely competitive, and laws forbid manufacturers from restricting where repairs can be done. So how is it high margin?

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