Last month, Ford ambitiously promised that it’d have fully autonomous cars operating in a ride-sharing service by 2021. “They’ll make their cars, they’ll employ thousands of people not from this country and they’ll sell their auto across the border”, Trump said. Ford shares have fallen 12 percent from the beginning of the year from $14.09 to Wednesday’s closing price of $12.14.
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No details have been released yet about which models will be built in the new Mexico- based plants but the United Auto Workers Union predicted that the Focus and the C-Max were likely to be on the list, citing lower production costs and more profit as the reasons behind the move.
Speaking in Flint, Michigan, the economically depressed former home of General Motors most recently wracked by a scandal over its contaminated water supplies, Trump said Ford’s move was another example of the erosion of USA industry helped by open borders for trade with Mexico. “We look at, ‘Is there an opportunity to make the software more robust?’ And we are finding, ‘What do we need in the next generation of sensors?'”
Ford CEO Mark Fields says GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump is completely wrong when he says that Ford plans to move its US operations to Mexico or even shift future investment outside the country. Other videos in the presentation show the routes that the vehicles, in this case Ford Fusions, will take around the Ford complex.
“This is one of the most exciting projects in the automotive industry”, said Randy Visintainer, Ford’s director of autonomous vehicle development. He has said he is transforming Ford into an automotive and a mobility company to succeed in this new era. There will be no driver, no steering wheel, no gas pedal and no brakes.
Public acceptance. Consumers will not only need to believe the added costs are justified but that they will be safe in a auto driven by computers. Nair said accidents like that could cause regulators to clamp down on the technology.
“More bad news for MI today”, he said. “But you can also argue that autonomous vehicles will be running continuously and will rack up more miles-and that that will mean more replacement”. Ford’s automotive operating margin was 6.8 per cent past year but is expected to rise through 2018.
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“The world is changing, and it’s changing rapidly”, he said, adding that Ford now sees itself as not just a carmaker but a “mobility company”. That will save $250 to $300 per vehicle, Ford’s Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks said. Right now, for example, there are 200,000 buildable combinations of the Ford Focus sedan in North America.
