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Ford’s CEO says a ‘big surprise’ is coming next year with electric vehicles

Ford CEO Jim Hackett on restructuring, going electric and China's slowdown
2 Hours Ago | 10:00

Ford Motor is gearing up to launch new electric cars as soon as next year, CEO Jim Hackett told CNBC on Sunday.

Ford has previously announced its plans to invest $11 billion in electric vehicles by 2022 and produce 40 hybrid and fully electric cars, in a plan to revive its slowing business. However, the company's chief told CNBC that drivers should be prepared for 'a big surprise' from Ford.

“We talked about a huge investment in electric vehicles. We have 16 models that are in design and development. We have a pretty big surprise coming next year,” Hackett told CNBC's Phil LeBeau on the sidelines of the Detroit Auto Show, which kicks off this week.

During the first nine months in 2018, Ford's profit dropped a whooping 27 percent from the same period in 2017. Shares of Ford, which tumbled 39 percent in 2018, are hunkered under $10 a share for the first time since 2012.

“Some of the pain in the margins additionally [is] because the vehicles are old. We have on average the oldest fleet in the industry and we are going to have average the newest fleet. 75 percent of the portfolio is being turned over,” the CEO said.

The company is also in the middle of a massive restructuring with an aim to slash costs by $14 billion over the next five years. Ford recently announced plans to cut thousands of jobs in Europe as well as discontinuing some unprofitable lines there.

Yet in the face of a skeptical market Hackett defended Ford's moves to right its ship. He told CNBC that investors “needed to be a little patient with some of the long-lived problems that haven't been addressed that I'm going to represent. In less than 19 months, I've addressed every one of them.”

Many companies have expressed concerns about American brands potentially falling out of favor in China. For example, tech giant Apple cut its forecast in January, sounding alarms that an economic slowdown will weigh on its business. However, Hackett is not so worried.

“China's optimism is still high with us,” he told CNBC. “The brand is one of the highest-ranking brands in the country. Even at the highest levels of the government they see it as a family-owned business that middle America loves. The Chinese want to relate to American businesses like that,” Hackett added.

BYTON Unveils a Closer Look at the M-Byte SUV Production Model at 2019 CES Las Vegas – PRNewswire

“BYTON’s M-Byte represents the transformation of the traditional car into a next-generation smart device for every user,” said Dr. Carsten Breitfeld, CEO and Co-founder of BYTON. “We achieve this through the combination our state-of-the-art EV platform and our proprietary BYTON Life digital ecosystem.” A Digital Cockpit That Improves The Driver ExperienceBYTON’s Shared Experience Display (SED)… Continue reading BYTON Unveils a Closer Look at the M-Byte SUV Production Model at 2019 CES Las Vegas – PRNewswire

Who Shops At Tesla Stores? — #NewsQuickie

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Published on January 11th, 2019 |

by Zachary Shahan

Who Shops At Tesla Stores? — #NewsQuickie

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January 11th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan

The data firm Factual stalked shoppers at US Tesla stores for a period of time last year and discovered some interesting things about the people who walk into those Apple-like showrooms.

Like CleanTechnica readers, the people strolling around Tesla stores and galleries were fairly wealthy. (Who’s surprised?) Shoppers were 109% more likely to have incomes between $150,000 and $175,000.

They were also 70% more likely to be new home owners than the average American.

The Tesla shoppers were also quite young, which fits well with my anecdotal evidence. Those strolling around Tesla stores were 40% more likely to be 35–44 years old.

Perhaps the wackiest — or most interesting — finding is that the respondents were 135% more likely to be Disney enthusiasts.

To wrap things up, these are the 10 dealership brands most likely to be frequented by the humans Factual found snooping around in Tesla stores:

Jaguar
Land Rover
MINI
Volvo
Audi
Volkswagen
Porsche
BMW
Lexus
Honda

We haven’t done thorough in-store (or lingering-outside-the-store) research, but we have conducted surveys of over 2,000 electric car drivers and 1,000 potential drivers. We didn’t ask if they were Mickey Mouse enthusiasts for some reason, but we did ask them a bunch of questions about the electric cars they have, the features they want in their next cars, and who they are. One particularly interesting finding was that 45% of current electric car buyers intend to buy a Tesla next.

To get that full report, head to: Electric Car Drivers: Demands, Desires & Dreams (2018).

If you plan to buy a Tesla too and want the benefits that come from using a referral code, feel free to use mine — http://ts.la/tomasz7234 — or not.

About the Author

Zachary Shahan Zach is tryin' to help society help itself (and other species). He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He's also the president of Important Media and the director/founder of EV Obsession and Solar Love. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada.

Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these particular companies and feels like they are good cleantech companies to invest in. But he offers no professional investment advice and would rather not be responsible for you losing money, so don't jump to conclusions.

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Jeep and Ram diesels, Cadillac electrics, MyChevy updates, Audi chargers: Today’s Car News

Sketch for proposed Volkswagen electric off-road SUV
GM announced a major restructuring that will result in more electric cars, with Cadillac as its focus. Fiat Chrysler will fix its dirty Ram pickup and Jeep Grand Cherokee EcoDiesels. And Audi has partnered with Amazon to get home chargers installed for its e-tron customers. All this and more on Green Car Reports.

In a settlement reminiscent of Volkswagen's, owners of EcoDiesel Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ram pickups will be offered cash along with a free software update to bring their vehicles into compliance with emissions laws.

GM made a major announcement that it plans to expand its electric vehicle lineup and convert Cadillac to an electric brand.

In the meantime, the company is trying to make life easier for Chevy Bolt EV owners by bringing live information on charger availability from ChargePoint, EVgo, and Greenlots to the MyChevy app.

And Audi plans to have Amazon sell and coordinate installation of chargers for its line of e-tron electric vehicles.

Volkswagen poached an engineer from Apple's Titan self-driving-car effort to head its own commercial self-driving and mobility services programs.

Finally, VW may be planning to build an electric off-road SUV as part of its new ID lineup of electric vehicles.

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Alexa and Google Assistant carve up CES

At CES, there’s no shortage of gadgets to talk to. Smart TVs, cars, pianos – and even a toilet – these are just some examples of devices that come with voice-activated helpers. No matter who makes the hardware, the virtual aide linked to or packaged inside is likely to be one of two: either Amazon’s… Continue reading Alexa and Google Assistant carve up CES

Carmaker Rolls-Royce urges UK’s May to avoid a hard Brexit

LONDON (Reuters) – Carmaker Rolls-Royce called on the British government to avoid a disorderly Brexit and said it was building up some stock, expanding warehouse capacity and training suppliers for customs changes in case Britain leaves the EU without a deal. FILE PHOTO: Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Chief Executive Officer, Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes, gestures as he is… Continue reading Carmaker Rolls-Royce urges UK’s May to avoid a hard Brexit

GM Teams With Chargepoint, EVgo & Greenlots

2 H BY MARK KANE Planning a long-distance trip with a Chevrolet Bolt EV will be easier General Motors announced a collaboration with three charging networks in the U.S. – EVgo, ChargePoint and Greenlots – to enable access to the largest collective network of more than 31,000 charging ports. GM says that it believes in… Continue reading GM Teams With Chargepoint, EVgo & Greenlots

Volkswagen hires Apple executive for autonomous vehicle role

FILE PHOTO: Volkswagen logos are pictured during the media day of the Salao do Automovel International Auto Show in Sao Paulo, Brazil November 6, 2018. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) said on Wednesday it had hired an executive from Apple (AAPL.O) as a director responsible for technical development at its commercial vehicles… Continue reading Volkswagen hires Apple executive for autonomous vehicle role

China car sales see first drop for 20 years

Car sales in China, the world’s biggest vehicle market, have seen their first annual fall in twenty years. Sales fell 6% to 22.7 million units in 2018, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). The deceleration comes amid a slowdown in China’s economy which has hit performance at car manufacturers around the world. The… Continue reading China car sales see first drop for 20 years

AI Predictions For 2019 From Technology Leaders

If 2018 is any indication, 2019 will see AI play an even bigger role in our lives than we imagined. It will be deployed in ways we don’t realize and to do things we didn’t expect. We won’t even be aware of when it is being used for or against us. And there may not be any appeal of AI decisions. Further, it will be everywhere deployed by everyone thanks to various companies democratizing the technology. These are the observations of leaders from around the industry as reported by Forbes.

“We are seeing the democratization of AI through open source algorithms, affordable computing power and AI specialized hardware,” said Roy Raanani, CEO and founder of Chorus.ai. “Google TensorFlow released open source software to allow anyone to build on Google’s own machine learning algorithms. Also the introduction of AI specialized hardware by Apple, Google, Tesla and NVIDIA is increasing AI performance by tens to hundreds, and enabling that performance in smaller form factors.”

Santi Subotovsky, General Partner at Emergence, and Oded Gal, Head of Products at Zoom Video Communications, believe AI will reshape business meetings by increasing productivity and surfacing hidden insights. AI combined with speech recognition can enable automatic note-taking. It can also surface non-verbal cues that participants of a meeting could miss.

Expect facial recognition as a standard part of the conference room. Much insight can be gained from knowing who used the room, when, and for what purpose.

Candace Worley, Chief Technical Strategist at McAfee, sounds a cautionary note. She believes there will be special oversight of AI usage due to the “legal, ethical, and cultural implications.” She cites the fact that “AI has demonstrated unfavorable behavior such as racial profiling, unfairly denying individuals loans, and incorrectly identifying basic information about users.”

Nick Caldwell, Chief Product Officer from Looker, offers the most optimistic endorsement of AI by suggesting we stop giving its decisions greater scrutiny than we do for humans. He uses a doctor as an example. We trust her professional judgment without forcing her to cite all the studies, research, journals, and lectures she consumed that factored into her decision. He acknowledges that sometimes AI will make mistakes. But for AI to do its best work, we have to get out of its way.

There are a few differences between AI and doctors. For one, we know exactly how, where, and by whom doctors are trained. We can audit that process and be sure it meets expected standards. Second, doctors are accountable for their mistakes. And there are certainly times when we get to question their judgment.

Legally, we still have not worked out what the training standard should be for AI, or who is liable when AI makes a mistake. Will insurance companies cover AI like they do other professionals? Despite these issues remaining open questions for now, it seems professionals in a number of industries are set to integrate it even more in their processes and in our lives.