Ford previewed a major shift in its business strategy last week when the automaker announced that it would be splitting itself into two distinct entities – Model e, which will focus on EVs, and Ford Blue, which will continue to handle ICE-powered vehicles. One of the many interesting tidbits that came from this announcement was the fact that Model e will have considerable influence over Ford Blue, and that the latter would focus on making improvements in terms of lowering costs and increasing efficiency. As it turns out, the automaker could achieve both by dropping some cab configurations on the Ford F-Series.
“You know, on the complexity side, I think it surprised even us that the F-150 Lightning generated 200,000 reservations with one cab, one box, 4×4, those are the truck choices, and standard and long-range battery,” said Lisa Drake vice president for EV industrialization, Ford Model e. “200,000 units at scale on one body style configuration. Dearborn Trucking – Kentucky truck, for example, can run 70, 80, in some cases, 90 jobs an hour in those facilities. And you can imagine how efficient they will be when we can reduce that complexity on EVs down to the levels that we’ve seen on the F-150 Lightning? That is going to unlock amazing efficiency through the process. And when we learn those things, we will then apply them back to Ford Blue. This is this complementary work that we see between these two organizations and I’m super excited to get started.”
Though Drake doesn’t specifically come out and confirm that Ford is looking at reducing the cab configurations on the Ford F-Series, these comments certainly seem to indicate that it’s possible, at least. And it would make a lot of sense, as SuperCrew, four-wheel drive pickups tend to dominate the sales charts these days.
Ford has also already made this same type of move a number of times in recent months. The 2022 Ford Super Duty King Ranch and Platinum trims are only available with four-wheel drive, as is also the case with the 2022 Ford Edge. Meanwhile, many more changes are on the horizon for Ford, as Ford is moving to more of a build-to-order paradigm that will pare down inventory on the #MyKCFord dealership lot and focus on models of limited configurations.
Source: Ford Authority
