91
Ford Delays $12 Billion in EV Investments Due To UAW Strike Impact and Slow Consumer Demand
(driveteslacanada.ca)
Oh no! Pay your workers more maybe?
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
91 points (91.0% liked)
Technology
59123 readers
3863 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
And make the EVs affordable so they can be demanded?
Affordable? Are you in the market for a new Ford vehicle? What does your budget look like?
If you're in the US you can get into a for like ~$20k after the federal tax incentive, plus any state incentives that would apply in your situation.
If you're talking about Ford specifically, they're not going after the budget market because they're trying to play to their strengths - the F150 and Mustang. Neither of those brands are typically associated with being cost conscious, but the F150 has been the best selling vehicle in the country for 
Chevy and Ford are garbage.
Just to put a number on it, the UAW cost increase is around $1000 per vehicle.
Ed: apologizes for the delay in the source. Here's a gift article from the nytimes Please un-downvote now, thanks
But I still can't vouch for the veracity of the claim. Mr. Lawler is Ford CFO.
"Mr. Lawler said on a conference call that the contract would raise the company’s labor costs by an average of $850 to $900 per vehicle."
Ford’s U.A.W. Deal Will Raise Costs While Easing Labor Strife https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/business/ford-uaw-contract.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6Ew.VpuI.7GTqA_SNwFxD
Can you provide a source for that?
Edit: Appreciate it!
Updated
Yeah, that won't affect the cost. If Ford could increase the price of their vehicles by $1,000 and still sell them, they would be doing that right now. All this will do is eat into their profits.
Pretty much. Prices are set by supply and demand, but when you tack on a fixed cost across the board it does put upward pressure on the price.
That sounds wrong. Their factories and parts must be super cheap for labor to make up such as large portion of cost.
The UAW pres, I think, said labor was like 5% the cost of vehicles. They could double everyone's pay and still make ridiculous profits.
I would have thought it was more honestly. I know what team’s labor is and it’s north of that figure for $10K customer price.
$1,000 labor is 2% on a $50,000 vehicle. 1.5% on $75,000. Obviously I’m not looking at dealership markup, etc for ease of math. This just gives you an idea of what percentage that is.
That's the cost to Ford, or how much they'd raise the price of their vehicles to compensate?
Make actual Electric cars, not a 90k electric pickup, or a "Mustang" EV crossover. The truck I get because the F-150 runs auto sales charts but nobody was, is, buying it. A majority of those crowds are not really EV friendly so why they went all in seems silly.
They would have done way better to first sell a PHEV to get people into electric and ease their range anxiety. 100% worked on my wife and now she drives in EV almost exclusively.
Fwiw, I own a Ford phev and love it. I'm looking at a bolt in the future since they have 10x the electric range.
We leased a Mazda CX-90 PHEV.
Yeah a Mustang EV crossover that they had to recall because the engines were shutting off when people floor it, which was also overpriced and not up to feature parity with other similarly-priced EVs. Maybe if they made a good EV or lowered the price consumer demand would suddenly materialize.
A recall is better than the class action lawsuit going on for the normal Mustang transmission issues.
I fucking would if I could buy a 2 door truck. But no, the only electric pickup options are 4 door, maximum size cabs with practically no bed.
I only want a truck for the bed. If it's electric it can be a daily driver but I don't need a back seat. My wife has the little SUV for that.
But I can't get that. So instead I'm going to buy an electric sprinter van for half the price.
they're also twice the price of a regular truck if you want any kind of usable range, which is the worst part. I don't need a truck that can do a 2.9s quarter mile, I need one that I can drive 200 miles in one direction, park for a week, and then drive home, on a route with no chargers.
I really didn't want to buy anything from Musk but Model 3s are still the best price for performance available.
Most of the money you pay for that car goes to China. A good bit goes to the workers. A very small amount goes to Elon. I wouldn't buy one because of the slave mines.
I want an EV.
I have the money for an EV.
I put in my order for my EV in early 2022.
I am still waiting on my EV to be ordered, nevermind manufactured and delivered.
I want an EV.
I have the money for an EV.
There is no way I'm paying the current crazy prices for cars.
Not to mention the current interest rates!
I get emails daily promising to save me money on my auto loan.
If I want to go from a 1.8% interest rate to a 7.4% interest rate and add two years to the length.
Not sure how that's saving me money, fuck half the time the payments are more.
It's almost always the second point. When a company is blaming something/someone, it's almost always the second point in their press releases, the first is there as the top half of their definition of a shit sandwich.