Archive for the ‘Ford updates’ Category
Monday, December 15th, 2008 |
First drive in the newly designed F-150 truck took place during a couple of days at Ford’s Michigan Proving Ground, a test facility with over 100 miles of road spread out on about 3,880 acres.
Ford set up four different tracks to test the F-150’s capabilities, and brought in 2009 Silverado, Tundra and Ram trucks for drive comparisons.
A few of the test courses simulate exaggerated conditions that probably do not represent roads you’ll encounter every day.
Suspension and Vibration
A section of road with large, rock-like bumps of various heights gave suspension systems a workout. A washboard segment (similar to the strips you hit if you wander off the pavement of some roads) revealed vibrations (and how those vibrations affect noise levels).
Remember that when vibrations are strong enough to pass into the cab cause squeaks and rattles and will eventually create fatigue in bushings and frame joints.
* The F-150 truck crossed the bumps with a good bit of bounce and shake, but stayed straight on the road. The washboard area created rattles in the dash and other components, but the noise wasn’t excessive.
* The Silverado stayed straight over the bumps, but with harsh jarring. The cab was noisy and a rear door rattled. Cab noise increased during the washboard test, and was accompanied by a great deal of dash vibration.
* The Dodge Ram’s rear end bounced and moved sideways. The washboard track produced minimal noise and interior vibrations.
* The Tundra traveled in a straight path, but was the only vehicle that transmitted bounce through the steering and the rear of the truck. The washboard drive produced a lot of vibration and noise inside the truck, and the hood shook.
Off-Road Driving
Ford trucks were alone on the off-road track; all were equipped with shift-on-the-fly 4WD HI range.
* In LO range (a lower gear ratio than most 4WD trucks), shift the transmission into first gear and you enter what Ford calls a crawl speed, where the truck uses the engine and gearing to hold itself back in a similar way as hill descent on other vehicles (but without using the anti-lock brake system).
* Pull out on the transfer cases shift knob to electronically lock the rear differential (can be done while moving).
* A button on the dash turns off traction control; hold the button down to turn off the stability control system for more versatility off-road (it turns itself back on if you exceed 35mph).
Bottom Line
Always try to look carefully at comparison set-ups, to determine if they are weighted towards a particular brand. And while Ford wanted its trucks to excel, the tests in Michigan seemed pretty level, with (mostly) evenly matched equipment.
The F-150’s enhanced abilities are a good indication that Ford is intent on keeping its best selling truck ranking.
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Thursday, July 24th, 2008 |
Ford Motor Co. plans to revamp some U.S. plants and bring six small vehicles to the U.S. market from overseas to meet customers’ growing demand for more fuel-efficient options, a person briefed on the company’s plans said Tuesday.
Ford has no immediate plans to close U.S. plants despite overcapacity in a slumping market, the person said. Instead, the automaker will retool plants to increase production of smaller cars and engines. The person requested anonymity because Ford isn’t confirming details until Thursday, when it releases second-quarter earnings.
The moves will further accelerate Ford’s efforts to ease its dependence on trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans, which accounted for 45 percent of its sales in the first half of this year. Ford’s U.S. sales dropped 14 percent in the first six months of 2008 as consumers shocked by rising gas prices sought smaller vehicles.
The steep sales decline is expected to drag down Ford’s second-quarter results after a surprise $100 million profit in the first quarter. Ford had warned that the results were an anomaly, and in May it abandoned its long-stated goal of returning to profitability by 2009. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial predict a second-quarter loss of 27 cents per share.
The moves to be announced Thursday are Ford’s latest efforts to deal with plunging truck and SUV sales, which have also forced production cuts at General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC, Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. In May, Ford announced it would slash truck and SUV production and cut several thousand salaried jobs on top of the 8,000 U.S. hourly jobs it is trying to cut this year.
On Monday, Ford said it plans to begin offering buyouts to workers at facilities in Michigan and Ohio, building on targeted buyouts offered in June at other plants in Kentucky and the Midwest.
Ford announced last month that it was cutting truck and SUV production for the rest of the year and increasing production of the Focus small car and Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner small SUVs. It also delayed the launch of its new F-150 pickup until fall.
Also in June, Ford revealed that it will build the global Fiesta subcompact at its factory in Cuautitlan, Mexico, which has been making trucks, and that it will build the European Focus small car in North America. Both cars are set to go on sale in the U.S. in 2010.
The company now plans to bring even more vehicles over from Europe and produce them in North America, according to the person briefed on the plans. They could include the Kuga small crossover vehicle, the Transit Connect and C-Max small vans and the next-generation Mondeo midsize car, which likely would replace the current Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan.
Some factories, the person said, will be retooled to produce more fuel-efficient four- and six-cylinder engines and more efficient transmissions for the new vehicles.
Also, to meet high demand for the current Focus small car, Ford will retool part of the Michigan Truck plant in the Detroit suburb of Wayne to build Focus bodies. The bodies would then be shipped next door to the Wayne Assembly plant, where the Focus is made, the person said. Ford has been trying to crank out more Focuses at the Wayne Assembly plant, but analysts have said its body shop can’t move as quickly as the rest of the factory, and that has slowed production.
Production of the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator SUVs, which are currently made at the Michigan Truck plant, would be moved to another location, likely the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, which builds Ford F-250 and F-550 Super Duty pickup trucks.
Rocky Comito, president of the UAW local in Louisville that represents workers at the plant, said Tuesday he hadn’t been told of any changes, although Ford promised new products for the truck plant and the Louisville Assembly plant in its national UAW contract reached last year.
“We tell them we’ll build whatever they bring us,” Comito said.
Greg Gardner, an analyst for the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, which publishes the annual Harbour Report on auto manufacturing, said converting an auto plant’s operations from trucks to cars is no easy feat and could easily cost tens of millions of dollars per factory. But the changeover is critical, he said, since Ford has lost small-car sales because it didn’t have enough inventory.
“You can’t use the same conveyor system for trucks as you can for cars,” Gardner said. “There’s some equipment, like torque wrenches and things like that … those are common to any vehicle. But really heavy-duty capital equipment has to be different.”
But it’s unclear if Wall Street will be satisfied with Ford’s latest plan. Brian Johnson, an analyst with Lehman Brothers, said Tuesday in a note to investors that Ford still has too much North American plant capacity and needs to close plants.
Ford shares rose 36 cents, or 6.6 percent, to $5.84 Tuesday.
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Monday, July 14th, 2008 |
The storm battering Detroit intensified yesterday with Ford Motor Co. offering a bleak sales outlook and its second major production cut in less than a month, which will wipe out 300 jobs at its Canadian operations.
Ford said it will delay introduction of a new generation of its F-series pickup by two months, cut production of trucks and truck-based sport utility vehicles even further than it announced less than a month ago and will have difficulty meeting its previous target of breaking even on a company-wide basis next year.
It also reiterated earlier plans to boost output of smaller cars and crossover utilities, including the CUVs made in Oakville, Ont.
“We view the move to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles as permanent and we are responding to customer demand,” Ford president Alan Mulally said in a statement.
Union officials said slashing output of trucks and SUVs means 300 jobs will be lost at the company’s Windsor, Ont., engine facility, which puts together V-8 and V-10 engines for pickups and SUVs.
There are about 2,500 Canadian Auto Workers members now at Ford’s engine plants and joint ventures in the city and 738 on layoff, Mike Vince, president of local 200 in Windsor, said yesterday.
The crisis in Detroit is spilling over to parts makers in Canada as well, with Magna International Inc. announcing this week that it will slash 400 jobs or one-quarter of the work force at a plant in St. Thomas, Ont., that makes frames for GM’s pickups. GM revealed in turn that it is delaying development of its next generation of pickup trucks to focus more of its resources on cars and other vehicles that use less gas.
Magna’s U.S. plants will take a hit with the Ford announcement because the parts giant makes many components for heavy-duty pickups assembled at one Ford plant in Kentucky and frames for the Explorer SUV built at another plant in that state. Output is being throttled back at both plants. It will trim a shift of Explorer production and cut the assembly line speed at the pickup plant.
Previous cuts by the Detroit Three are one of the causes of parts sector employment in Canada plunging by more than 20,000 jobs to 81,676 workers last month from a peak reached in 2001, industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers said in a report yesterday.
The parts sector will not disappear, said Mr. DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc.
“The remaining parts sector should be able to recover as the cyclical downturn in the industry recovers,” Mr. DesRosiers said.
The Ford announcement capped a brutal week for the Detroit Three that included forecasts by several Wall Street analysts and the chairman of Chrysler LLC that sales in the U.S. market will plunge to their lowest level this month in more than a decade.
Underlining the growing danger to Detroit was Ford’s new statement that its perennially profitable credit arm will report a pretax loss this year and will not pay a dividend to its parent company.
Regulator filings show Ford Motor Credit Co. has posted a profit annually since 1989, which is as far back as Securities and Exchange Commission documents go.
Two influential U.S. ratings agencies added to the pressure, with Standard & Poor’s Corp. placing ratings for all three companies on credit watch with negative implications and Moody’s Investors Service Inc. cutting Ford’s outlook to negative from stable.
Both rating agencies are worried about the cash drain the severe slump in truck and SUV sales is causing.
“We have renewed concerns about all three auto makers’ future cash outflows in light of the prospects for U.S. sales for the rest of 2008 and into 2009,” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Robert Schulz.
Deteriorating fundamentals could reduce liquidity to undesirable levels by the second half of next year, Standard & Poor’s added.
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Friday, July 11th, 2008 |
Ford Motor Company is making further reductions to its North American truck production plan while adding more small cars, crossovers and fuel-efficient powertrains, as the company tries to respond to rising fuel costs and the shift away from large trucks and SUVs.”As gasoline prices average more than $4 a gallon and consumers worry about the weak U.S. economy, we see June industry-wide auto sales slowing further and demand for large trucks and SUVs at one of the lowest levels in decades,” said Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally.Ford is also delaying the introduction of the new 2009 Ford F-150 by two months to sell down dealer inventory of the current model.The new F-150 now will go on sale in late fall.Looks to EuropeFord will also tap into its European lineup and bring more of those vehicles to North America.In addition to hatchback and sedan versions of the European-engineered Ford Fiesta small car that goes on sale in North America in early 2010, the four- and five-door versions of the next-generation European Ford Focus small car will be produced in North America beginning in late 2010.The new Focus will be common with Europe, South America and Asia Pacific and represent the next generation of today’s successful European Focus. Excellent fuel economy will be achieved through new highly efficient direct-injection engine technology and a new advanced six-speed transmission.The new Focus and Fiesta— as well as other small cars and crossovers from Europe— will be part of an unprecedented period of new Ford product introductions that has only just begun in North America.The new Ford Flex crossover and Lincoln MKS sedan went on sale this month, and the new F-150 goes on sale in late fall.New versions of the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln MKZ mid-size cars debut late this year, as do all-new hybrid versions of the Fusion and Milan.Big upgradesBy the end of this year, 70 per cent of all Ford, Lincoln and Mercury products by volume in North America will be new or significantly upgraded compared with the 2006 models. By the end of 2010, 100 percent of the product lineup will be new, including in 2009 the next-generation Mustang, new fuel-saving EcoBoost engines and new European Transit Connect.”We remain absolutely committed to accelerating the development of the new products that customers want and value,” Mulally said. “We sell some of the best smaller cars and utility vehicles in the world in our profitable European and South American operations, and our plan is to introduce these same vehicles in North America as quickly as possible. This is an integral part of our plan to leverage our global assets and achieve our goal of profitable growth.”
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Monday, June 23rd, 2008 |
The Ford Motor Company said it is making further reductions to its North American truck production plan, while adding more small cars, crossovers and fuel-efficient powertrains in response to the continued deterioration in the U.S. business environment and the accelerated shift away from large trucks and SUVs.Ford also announced that sedan and hatchback versions of the next-generation European Ford Focus will be produced in North America beginning in late 2010.“As gasoline prices average more than $4 a gallon and consumers worry about the weak U.S. economy, we see June industry-wide auto sales slowing further and demand for large trucks and SUVs at one of the lowest levels in decades,” said Alan Mulally, president and CEO. “Ford has taken decisive action to respond to this accelerating shift in customer demand away from large trucks and SUVs to smaller cars and crossovers, and we will continue to act swiftly moving forward.”Including medium and heavy vehicles, Ford now expects U.S. industry volume to be between 14.7 and 15.2 million units, compared with the previous assumption of 15 to 15.4 million units. Accordingly, Ford now plans to produce 475,000 vehicles in the third quarter, a reduction of 50,000 units from previously-announced plans and a decline of 25 per cent when compared with the 2007 third quarter. In the fourth quarter, Ford plans to produce 550,000 to 590,000 units, a reduction of 40,000 units from previously-announced plans, and a decline of 8 to 14 per cent compared with the 2007 fourth quarter.Ford will also delay the introduction of the new 2009 F-150 pickup truck by approximately two months, due to the industry-wide slowdown in the segment and the need to sell down dealer inventory of the current model. The new truck will go on sale in late fall.To cut back its production, Ford will now begin 2009 F-150 production in August at Kansas City Assembly Plant and in September at Dearborn Truck, and will eliminate one shift at each plant; Michigan Truck Plant will be idled for nine consecutive weeks beginning the week of June 23; and the line speed will be reduced at Kentucky Truck Plant and Chicago Assembly. Production of large pickups will wind down at Cuautitlan Assembly Plant in Mexico by the end of 2008; the plant will be retooled for production of the new Fiesta small car for North America, beginning in early 2010.Ford will also add a third shift for production of the Ford Edge, Lincoln MKX and Ford Flex at its plant in Oakville, Ontario. Other upgraded plants include a third shift at Kansas City, which produces the Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner; and a new third shift at Wayne Assembly to produce the Ford Focus.“We view the move to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles as permanent, and we are responding to customer demand,” Mulally said. “In the near term, we are adjusting production to the actual demand, increasing small cars and crossovers, and reducing large trucks and SUVs. For the long term, we are moving fast to introduce more small cars, crossovers and fuel-efficient powertrains, including more hybrids, and we will adjust our manufacturing facilities to match our updated product line-up.”
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Monday, June 23rd, 2008 |
Union says slashing output of pick ups and SUVs will eliminate 300 jobs
The storm battering Detroit intensified yesterday with Ford Motor Co. offering a bleak sales outlook and its second major production cut in less than a month, which will wipe out 300 jobs at its Canadian operations.
Ford said it will delay introduction of a new generation of its F-series pickup by two months, cut production of trucks and truck-based sport utility vehicles even further than it announced less than a month ago and will have difficulty meeting its previous target of breaking even on a company-wide basis next year.
It also reiterated earlier plans to boost output of smaller cars and crossover utilities, including the CUVs made in Oakville, Ont.
“We view the move to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles as permanent and we are responding to customer demand,” Ford president Alan Mulally said in a statement.
Union officials said slashing output of trucks and SUVs means 300 jobs will be lost at the company’s Windsor, Ont., engine facility, which puts together V-8 and V-10 engines for Pickups and SUVs.
There are about 2,500 Canadian Auto Workers members now at Ford’s engine plants and joint ventures in the city and 738 on layoff, Mike Vince, president of local 200 in Windsor, said yesterday.
The crisis in Detroit is spilling over to parts makers in Canada as well, with Magna International Inc. announcing this week that it will slash 400 jobs or one-quarter of the work force at a plant in St. Thomas, Ont., that makes frames for GM’s pickups. GM revealed in turn that it is delaying development of its next generation of pickup trucks to focus more of its resources on cars and other vehicles that use less gas.
Magna’s U.S. plants will take a hit with the Ford announcement because the parts giant makes many components for heavy-duty pickups assembled at one Ford plant in Kentucky and frames for the Explorer SUV built at another plant in that state. Output is being throttled back at both plants. It will trim a shift of Explorer production and cut the assembly line speed at the pickup plant.
Previous cuts by the Detroit Three are one of the causes of parts sector employment in Canada plunging by more than 20,000 jobs to 81,676 workers last month from a peak reached in 2001, industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers said in a report yesterday.
The parts sector will not disappear, said Mr. DesRosiers, president of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc.
“The remaining parts sector should be able to recover as the cyclical downturn in the industry recovers,” Mr. DesRosiers said.
The Ford announcement capped a brutal week for the Detroit Three that included forecasts by several Wall Street analysts and the chairman of Chrysler LLC that sales in the U.S. market will plunge to their lowest level this month in more than a decade.
Underlining the growing danger to Detroit was Ford’s new statement that its perennially profitable credit arm will report a pretax loss this year and will not pay a dividend to its parent company.
Regulator filings show Ford Motor Credit Co. has posted a profit annually since 1989, which is as far back as Securities and Exchange Commission documents go.
Two influential U.S. ratings agencies added to the pressure, with Standard & Poor’s Corp. placing ratings for all three companies on credit watch with negative implications and Moody’s Investors Service Inc. cutting Ford’s outlook to negative from stable.
Both rating agencies are worried about the cash drain the severe slump in truck and SUV sales is causing.
“We have renewed concerns about all three auto makers’ future cash outflows in light of the prospects for U.S. sales for the rest of 2008 and into 2009,” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Robert Schulz.
Deteriorating fundamentals could reduce liquidity to undesirable levels by the second half of next year, Standard & Poor’s added.
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Monday, June 2nd, 2008 |
Ford Motor Co. said Wednesday it plans to greatly increase the use of more fuel-efficient six-speed automatic transmissions, doubling their number by the end of next year and putting them in 98 percent of its North American vehicles by 2012.Ford said the six-speed automatic transmissions offer 4 percent to 6 percent better fuel economy than four- and five-speed automatics.The Dearborn-based automaker says its 6F35 six-speed transmissions will debut in the 2009-model Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner crossover vehicles, which now have four-speed automatic transmissions. They also will go into the 2009 Mazda Tribute and two other vehicles early next year, Ford said.”These technologies are all about fuel economy,” said Craig Renneker, Ford’s chief engineer for new automatic transmissions.Ford Vice President Barb Samardzich, head of the company’s North American transmission operations, said the new transmissions are key to Ford’s planned 30-percent cut in vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.”They also deliver improved acceleration and smoother shifting, all at a great value for consumers,” she said in a statement.Congress passed a law last year that requires new cars and trucks to meet a fleet average of 35 mpg by 2020, a 40 percent increase from the current average requirement of 25 mpg.Ford said its Sterling Heights transmission plant will make 1.3 million 6F35 transmissions a year. A $658 million investment announced last year at transmission plants in Sterling Heights and Livonia, Mich., and Sharonville, Ohio, was primarily for making these transmissions, Ford said.General Motors Corp. last month unveiled a six-speed automatic transmission combined with a four-cylinder engine in the popular 2008 Chevy Malibu.GM said the new powertrain would debut immediately in the high-end Malibu LTZ and next year in two lower-priced Malibu models.
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Monday, June 2nd, 2008 |
Reflecting changed priorities as rising fuel prices bite, Ford is transforming a Mexican large truck plant to make the European-designed Fiesta small car for North America from early 2010.Ford also said it would sell a hatchback version alongside the popular sedan and add diesel engine production and a gearbox joint venture in Mexico.Beginning this year, the Cuautitlan facility near Mexico City will be converted from current production of F-Series pickups for Mexico - future supplies will be imported from the US - to small cars for all North America.The Chihuahua engine plant, which builds I4 engines, also will assemble diesels for light- and medium-duty trucks in a variety of global markets.In addition, through a joint venture with Getrag (GFT), Ford will establish a new transmission plant in Guanajuato to supply various vehicle lines.Ford said the multi-plant development project is a US$3bn investment, including the support of local suppliers, as well as Mexico’s largest ever automotive investment, expected to create approximately 4,500 direct jobs. Together with indirect employment at suppliers, the moves affects 30,000 jobs in Mexico.”Ford is absolutely committed to leveraging our global assets to accelerate the shift to more fuel-efficient small cars and powertrain technologies that people really want and value,” said Ford president and CEO Alan Mulally.”Our investments in these facilities in Mexico are part of our plan to further realign our manufacturing capacity in line with the introduction of more small cars and crossovers.”"Customers responded very positively after seeing both the sedan and hatchback versions of the Verve small car concept [at motor shows],” noted Mark Fields, Ford’s president of The Americas. “We know the market is headed toward more small cars and crossovers. With our product and manufacturing flexibility, we will be able to offer both models and add production capacity.”Momentum in small-car sales is outpacing overall industry growth worldwide, the automaker said. Globally, small car sales have grown from 23m in 2002 to an estimated 38m in 2012.Driving the growth in the North American market is a group of young people aged 13 to 28 years - dubbed ‘millennials’. Today, this group stands 1.7bn strong worldwide and will represent 28% of the total US population by 2010.The new investment is expected to increase Ford of Mexico’s annual production to almost 500,000 vehicles and 330,000 engines by 2012, with about 80% of the vehicles and most engines headed for the North American market.Ford also has stamping and assembly plants in Hermosillo, Sonora, where the Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln MKZ sedans are built. These mid-size cars are sold throughout North America as well as Venezuela and Brazil.The Associated Press (AP) said Ford’s move was a blow to the United Auto Workers union, which last year approved a contract that granted concessions to the automaker.Earlier this year, according to AP, UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said the union would try to convince Ford that its US plants were competitive enough that the automaker could make money building its smallest cars in the US. Currently, all subcompacts sold in the US were built overseas, he said at the time.AP noted that Ford has sold 12m Fiestas since the vehicle was introduced in 1976. Although a familiar name to customers in Europe, Asia and South America, it was only sold in the US - from 1978 to 1980.
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Monday, June 2nd, 2008 |
The Ford Motor Company has been plagued by different problems in recent months. Last year, they have lost the most money in their storied and lengthy history. They have even used the company’s plants as collateral for a loan they needed badly.
And it seems that Ford is not out of the woods yet. Recently, the company announced that they are recalling diesel engined 2008 model Super Duty trucks. The recall is the result of reports of tailpipe fires on diesel variants of the 2008 model of the heavy duty pickup trucks. The culprit of these fires was discovered to be leaking oil or fuel ignited when it came in contact with the diesel particulate filter located near the tailpipe of the trucks.
As of today, FoMoCo received three reports of tailpipe fires. It can be remembered that Ford proudly announced the development of the particulate filter and its ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of the diesel engines. In one reported case, it was said that the truck’s hot tailpipe ignited the grass beneath it. Fortunately though, the grass fire was extinguished immediately and that no one was hurt neither in the incident nor in the other two cases of tailpipe fires.
The recall, according to Dan Jarvis, spokesman for Ford, “is an important product for us and an important customer base, and we want to move swiftly to make sure this does not become a safety issue for our customers.”The recall will be a big blow to the company’s reputation and it might as well negatively affect the sale of the Super Duty trucks. The truck is one of Ford’s most profitable vehicles and the company rally needs to address the situation as soon as possible. That is why Ford will be sending out recall notices to their customers in early April. But before that, their dealers can warn them of the possible risk of tailpipe fires.
The recall is the second problem that FoMoCo encountered with the Ford Super Duty Truck. It can be remembered that in late February, Ford’s engine supplier Navistar International Corp. halted deliveries of the PowerStroke engines due to contract disputes. The supply of the engines to Ford’s assembly plants is as abrupt as a vehicle stopped in its tracks by brake components from EBC Active Brakes Direct.The recall will affect the first 8,400 diesel Super Duty trucks for the 2008 model year. These vehicles will undergo software upgrades that according to Jarvis will only take less than ten minutes per vehicle. The new software upgrade will shutdown the vehicle once it detects abnormally hot temperature on the particulate filter. This will give drivers of the Ford Super Duty trucks to pull safely to the side of the road to let the particulate filter cool down before running the vehicle again.
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Friday, April 25th, 2008 |
New seats designed by an in-house team at Ford Motor Co. are to debut this spring and summer in three important vehicles: the F-150 pickup, the Lincoln MKS and the Ford Flex.Jerry Brown, Ford’s chief engineer for global seats and restraints engineering, said the new seats are part of an effort that began in 2004 at Ford to do more of its own interior design and engineering.Ford expanded its seat engineering department from about 65 to 150 to develop seats across all Ford cars and trucks with a unique look and feel.When the program began, Ford had 28 seat platforms. Today, the company has nine and it is aiming to reduce that to two. The F-150, Flex and Lincoln MKS feature the same seat, Brown said, but each has different cushioning, fabric and other modifications to fit the character of each vehicle.”We had to continually pay for the engineering, the testing and then the tooling to constantly refurbish or replace these 28 different seat structures,” Brown said. “So we took a step back to try to figure out how we could get away from that.”The first seats from the program debuted on the Ford Focus last fall. Warranty claims on those seats dropped 47% and the money spent to settle claims fell 70%, Brown said.Ford has saved millions of dollars from the program beyond the warranty savings but Brown declined to be more specific. Now, Ford may use the program as a model for other product areas, such as instrument panels and center consoles.”We just simply feel we need to be more involved in the system integration of our interiors to ensure they are distinctively Ford,” Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s group vice president of global product development, said at the SAE 2008 World Congress last week.
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