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> Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic.

> Current-day Ford Motor having to go begging to China - for a major, iron-based component needed to produce more cars - that is laughable, and beyond pathetic. They're lucky China is answering. They're incredibly late to the EV game; considering that they're doing remarkably well.

dylan604 4y ago
>They're incredibly late to the EV game; considering that they're doing remarkably well. When you're not the trailblazer, it's easy to make catch-up progress to those that went before you in much much less time. Why this is constantly a source of amazement is funny to me. By the time Ford got involved, the path was no longer a beaten down path, it was fully paved 8-lane highway. Instead trying to figure out how to make an electrified car, they just took all of the learning before them and then turned it into something fancy. While Tesla is "working" on self-driving and not doing well with it, Ford said, nah, we'll just turn our batteries into a generator for the home. They built an actual truck that looks like the same truck everyone is used to and say here it is as an electric. That's easy to do when you are riding coat tails
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  All of this is true except for the part where no other manufacturer (other than Tesla) has a reliable source of batteries -- so they're subject to intense supply chain constraints that limit inventory drastically. And so they were unable to meet the consumer demand for EVs. Hence you simply can't even get a Ford F150 Lightning even though it looks like a great vehicle. This all pre-dated the COVID related supply chain issues, BTW. Lack of battery supply is behind the lackluster inventory (and therefore sales) of all non-Tesla vehicles for over half a decade. I say all this not as a Tesla fan, but as a GM electric vehicle owner. GM was unable to produce more then a few tens of thousands of Bolts a year -- not because consumers didn't want them, but because there was simply no way for them to get them from LG Chem. VW/Audi group has had the same issue. They're both not late to the game on EV tech or production, but very late to the game on battery production. Being late to the game in this case has a huge cost. And various governments wasted time and money providing consumer subsidies for EV purchases thinking this would lead the market to magically "solve" the EV supply issue by increasing consumer demand when the issue that really needed solving was volume and cost of battery production. If we were going to involve public dollars in getting EVs to market we should have invested massively in encouraging battery production. Some governments are waking up to this now at least.
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    Ford believes they have the battery supply for a 600,000 EV/year run rate by late-2023 and are shooting for 2,000,000/year by 2026. Bloomberg projects VW selling more EVs than Tesla by 2024 and they are planning to have 240GWh/yr of in-house battery production by 2030. BYD in China is fully vertically integrated on EV production, moreso than Tesla who relies on 3rd party mining and on Panasonic for chemistries/cell production. BYD is now the largest PHEV+BEV manufacturer in the world. Tesla might have had a head start but There has been a lot of catching up going on, and as we get closer and closer to resource constraints instead of production constraints they aren't in much better of a position than any other manufacturer.
    - RustyConsul 4y ago
      so what you're saying is they are not only copying the good parts of Tesla (Electrification) but also the bad parts (lying about future production?). Ford made 30k electric vehicles in 2021, 600k means a growth rate of %1900 in the span of 2 1/2 years (They need to be at the run rate in 2026)? Battery packs were a problem to Tesla in 2018 and now they've moved onto the bigger problem that no one is talking about.... There isn't enough lithium and nickel production to even make this possible. That's why Tesla launched its own mining operations in Nevada. Also, its not like Elon hasn't been screaming about lack of nickel and lithium production since like 2018, just no one seems to be paying attention.
      - notatoad 4y ago
        >Ford made 30k electric vehicles in 2021 source? all i could find was this https://insideevs.com/news/596347/us-ford-ev-sales-june-2022 https://insideevs.com/news/596347/us-ford-ev-sales-june-2022 > H1 production of nearly 34,000 units is below the level from 2021 in the same period. which is just talking about mach-e production, not other EVs.
        enragedcacti 4y ago
        I think Mach-e is the only BEV Ford sold in 2021. The E-transit and F-150 Lightning both started sales in 2022. They were selling anumber of PHEVs but many people don't count those as "EV" production.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > That's easy to do when you are riding coat tails No, that really isn't easy to do when you're running something as large as the Ford Motor Company. In fact it is much easier for a new entrant to make such big changes.
- nr2x 4y ago
  I think you’re precisely identifying why Tesla is well and truly fucked. The big automakers know how to make cars at scale and once they decide to it’s easy. They may be slow giants, but Tesla lost the advantage of being small and quick. German, Japanese, and American manufacturers were the biggest national security components of WWII. Tesla is a second tier interest of a CEO who prefers to be an online troll than keeping up with the auto industry.
  - sitkack 4y ago
    Tesla assembly lines appear to be very well designed. I wonder what else they could make.
  - electrondood 4y ago
    > Tesla is well and truly fucked Sorry, this is just absurd. Tesla is the only company designing for massive scale and ruthless simplification from the start. Their entire DNA is based on YAGNI. Every other legacy automaker is pinned between their dealerships, their dependence on consumer debt, their own massive debt, and the fact that they'll need to cannibalize existing business to pivot to EVs. No other company owns their own destiny by being more in control of their supply chain than Tesla.
    - Amezarak 4y ago
      > Tesla is the only company designing for massive scale In 2020 GM sold 6.8 million vehicles. The other manufacturers are already operating at massive scale. Or are you arguing the automotive market will suddenly dramatically increase in a way existing manufacturers can't deal with? That consumers will suddenly be flush with cash to buy more brand new cars than they are already buying and Tesla will be the most popular option? This is very hard for me to imagine. > their dependence on consumer debt ??? Teslas are not cheap. I will not be able to afford a Tesla for the forseeable future. Unless Teslas comes down below 25k, no Teslas are in my future, another ICE car or hybrid will be. How is Tesla not dependent on consumer debt? Or do you mean something else by this?
      - 4y ago
- electrondood 4y ago
  > While Tesla is "working" on self-driving and not doing well with it Maybe you missed the footage of FSD perfectly navigating San Francisco during rush hour [1]. I'd say they're doing pretty damn well. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh8AV3OMWYs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh8AV3OMWYs
  - gamblor956 4y ago
    You must have missed the news reports today of a self driving Tesla running into a motorcycle and killing the rider because AP didn't "see" it.
- throwtheacctawy 4y ago
- adrianmsmith 4y ago
  > When you're not the trailblazer, it's easy to make catch-up progress to those that went before you in much much less time. Why this is constantly a source of amazement is funny to me. That sounds logical but it doesn't often actually happen that way, which is why I think there is amazement the few times it does. For example, Nokia could have just caught up with Apple after they released the iPhone? Motorola etc. could have just caught up with Nokia in the 90s when Nokia made phones people actually wanted? Apple of the 90s could have just caught up with Microsoft and Windows right?
justapassenger 4y ago
Incredibly late? EV are still tiny % of global sales. And compared to what some EV startups want people to think, building good EV isn’t that hard for traditional OEMs, once company commits to it. F150 and MachE are very good EVs.
- epistasis 4y ago
  It's at around 9% of market share and doubling annually. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-supply-challenges-to-more-than-double-global-sales https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-supp... They are missing out on the easy part of the S-curve of adoption, and will have a far far harder time securing key competitive tech and supply chains by entering too late There are currently ~8 major battery manufacturers, and right now a large bevy of battery startups. But right now is probably the last time in history to enter the market, because you can't just innovate on electrolyte or anode or cathode and enter the market, you have to do it all. And the lead times for development of new products, even in wel established companies with solid pipelines, is around five years. The US did innovate quite a bit in this space, but political interference and strange political beliefs about batteries, like the physics prevents them from being used in all the ways we are currently using them, has significantly held back the US from leading as much as it could have in this space. This is I n large part because industry leaders like Ford were so anti-scientifically anti-EV. We kneecapped our future to let current rentiers, masquerading as gigantic industrialists, collect rent.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    You don’t need to be manufacturing batteries to make EVs. Even vertical integration darling, Tesla, is buying most of their batteries (and the tech behind them) from suppliers like BYD and Panasonic. Their in-house efforts so far are not yielding any massive success. Batteries at the core are commodities, where you have laser thin margins and supplier model that is pulling R&D costs from many companies is basically only long term way to go. Electric part of an EV is easy. It’s a car that’s hard part.
    - 4y ago

dylan604 4y ago

>They're incredibly late to the EV game; considering that they're doing remarkably well. When you're not the trailblazer, it's easy to make catch-up progress to those that went before you in much much less time. Why this is constantly a source of amazement is funny to me. By the time Ford got involved, the path was no longer a beaten down path, it was fully paved 8-lane highway. Instead trying to figure out how to make an electrified car, they just took all of the learning before them and then turned it into something fancy. While Tesla is "working" on self-driving and not doing well with it, Ford said, nah, we'll just turn our batteries into a generator for the home. They built an actual truck that looks like the same truck everyone is used to and say here it is as an electric. That's easy to do when you are riding coat tails

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
All of this is true except for the part where no other manufacturer (other than Tesla) has a reliable source of batteries -- so they're subject to intense supply chain constraints that limit inventory drastically. And so they were unable to meet the consumer demand for EVs. Hence you simply can't even get a Ford F150 Lightning even though it looks like a great vehicle. This all pre-dated the COVID related supply chain issues, BTW. Lack of battery supply is behind the lackluster inventory (and therefore sales) of all non-Tesla vehicles for over half a decade. I say all this not as a Tesla fan, but as a GM electric vehicle owner. GM was unable to produce more then a few tens of thousands of Bolts a year -- not because consumers didn't want them, but because there was simply no way for them to get them from LG Chem. VW/Audi group has had the same issue. They're both not late to the game on EV tech or production, but very late to the game on battery production. Being late to the game in this case has a huge cost. And various governments wasted time and money providing consumer subsidies for EV purchases thinking this would lead the market to magically "solve" the EV supply issue by increasing consumer demand when the issue that really needed solving was volume and cost of battery production. If we were going to involve public dollars in getting EVs to market we should have invested massively in encouraging battery production. Some governments are waking up to this now at least.
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  Ford believes they have the battery supply for a 600,000 EV/year run rate by late-2023 and are shooting for 2,000,000/year by 2026. Bloomberg projects VW selling more EVs than Tesla by 2024 and they are planning to have 240GWh/yr of in-house battery production by 2030. BYD in China is fully vertically integrated on EV production, moreso than Tesla who relies on 3rd party mining and on Panasonic for chemistries/cell production. BYD is now the largest PHEV+BEV manufacturer in the world. Tesla might have had a head start but There has been a lot of catching up going on, and as we get closer and closer to resource constraints instead of production constraints they aren't in much better of a position than any other manufacturer.
  - RustyConsul 4y ago
    so what you're saying is they are not only copying the good parts of Tesla (Electrification) but also the bad parts (lying about future production?). Ford made 30k electric vehicles in 2021, 600k means a growth rate of %1900 in the span of 2 1/2 years (They need to be at the run rate in 2026)? Battery packs were a problem to Tesla in 2018 and now they've moved onto the bigger problem that no one is talking about.... There isn't enough lithium and nickel production to even make this possible. That's why Tesla launched its own mining operations in Nevada. Also, its not like Elon hasn't been screaming about lack of nickel and lithium production since like 2018, just no one seems to be paying attention.
    - notatoad 4y ago
      >Ford made 30k electric vehicles in 2021 source? all i could find was this https://insideevs.com/news/596347/us-ford-ev-sales-june-2022 https://insideevs.com/news/596347/us-ford-ev-sales-june-2022 > H1 production of nearly 34,000 units is below the level from 2021 in the same period. which is just talking about mach-e production, not other EVs.
      - enragedcacti 4y ago
        I think Mach-e is the only BEV Ford sold in 2021. The E-transit and F-150 Lightning both started sales in 2022. They were selling anumber of PHEVs but many people don't count those as "EV" production.
jacquesm 4y ago
> That's easy to do when you are riding coat tails No, that really isn't easy to do when you're running something as large as the Ford Motor Company. In fact it is much easier for a new entrant to make such big changes.
nr2x 4y ago
I think you’re precisely identifying why Tesla is well and truly fucked. The big automakers know how to make cars at scale and once they decide to it’s easy. They may be slow giants, but Tesla lost the advantage of being small and quick. German, Japanese, and American manufacturers were the biggest national security components of WWII. Tesla is a second tier interest of a CEO who prefers to be an online troll than keeping up with the auto industry.
- sitkack 4y ago
  Tesla assembly lines appear to be very well designed. I wonder what else they could make.
- electrondood 4y ago
  > Tesla is well and truly fucked Sorry, this is just absurd. Tesla is the only company designing for massive scale and ruthless simplification from the start. Their entire DNA is based on YAGNI. Every other legacy automaker is pinned between their dealerships, their dependence on consumer debt, their own massive debt, and the fact that they'll need to cannibalize existing business to pivot to EVs. No other company owns their own destiny by being more in control of their supply chain than Tesla.
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    > Tesla is the only company designing for massive scale In 2020 GM sold 6.8 million vehicles. The other manufacturers are already operating at massive scale. Or are you arguing the automotive market will suddenly dramatically increase in a way existing manufacturers can't deal with? That consumers will suddenly be flush with cash to buy more brand new cars than they are already buying and Tesla will be the most popular option? This is very hard for me to imagine. > their dependence on consumer debt ??? Teslas are not cheap. I will not be able to afford a Tesla for the forseeable future. Unless Teslas comes down below 25k, no Teslas are in my future, another ICE car or hybrid will be. How is Tesla not dependent on consumer debt? Or do you mean something else by this?
    - 4y ago
electrondood 4y ago
> While Tesla is "working" on self-driving and not doing well with it Maybe you missed the footage of FSD perfectly navigating San Francisco during rush hour [1]. I'd say they're doing pretty damn well. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh8AV3OMWYs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh8AV3OMWYs
- gamblor956 4y ago
  You must have missed the news reports today of a self driving Tesla running into a motorcycle and killing the rider because AP didn't "see" it.
throwtheacctawy 4y ago
adrianmsmith 4y ago
> When you're not the trailblazer, it's easy to make catch-up progress to those that went before you in much much less time. Why this is constantly a source of amazement is funny to me. That sounds logical but it doesn't often actually happen that way, which is why I think there is amazement the few times it does. For example, Nokia could have just caught up with Apple after they released the iPhone? Motorola etc. could have just caught up with Nokia in the 90s when Nokia made phones people actually wanted? Apple of the 90s could have just caught up with Microsoft and Windows right?

justapassenger 4y ago

Incredibly late? EV are still tiny % of global sales. And compared to what some EV startups want people to think, building good EV isn’t that hard for traditional OEMs, once company commits to it. F150 and MachE are very good EVs.

epistasis 4y ago
It's at around 9% of market share and doubling annually. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-supply-challenges-to-more-than-double-global-sales https://www.iea.org/commentaries/electric-cars-fend-off-supp... They are missing out on the easy part of the S-curve of adoption, and will have a far far harder time securing key competitive tech and supply chains by entering too late There are currently ~8 major battery manufacturers, and right now a large bevy of battery startups. But right now is probably the last time in history to enter the market, because you can't just innovate on electrolyte or anode or cathode and enter the market, you have to do it all. And the lead times for development of new products, even in wel established companies with solid pipelines, is around five years. The US did innovate quite a bit in this space, but political interference and strange political beliefs about batteries, like the physics prevents them from being used in all the ways we are currently using them, has significantly held back the US from leading as much as it could have in this space. This is I n large part because industry leaders like Ford were so anti-scientifically anti-EV. We kneecapped our future to let current rentiers, masquerading as gigantic industrialists, collect rent.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  You don’t need to be manufacturing batteries to make EVs. Even vertical integration darling, Tesla, is buying most of their batteries (and the tech behind them) from suppliers like BYD and Panasonic. Their in-house efforts so far are not yielding any massive success. Batteries at the core are commodities, where you have laser thin margins and supplier model that is pulling R&D costs from many companies is basically only long term way to go. Electric part of an EV is easy. It’s a car that’s hard part.
  - 4y ago