Plug-in Hybrids leaving Ford in the Dust
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) made waves this week with Monday’s announcement from the City of Austin for ‘soft fleet orders’ of 600 PHEVs, from the first automaker to produce them, setting aside $1 million in rebates for citizens to buy PHEVs. Austin launched the “Plug-in Partners� campaign along with the cities Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle and Baltimore and prominent national security experts to say to the automakers that there is, indeed a market for petroleum-free, plug-in vehicles. When it comes to PHEVs, if Ford builds them, Americans will buy them, and local governments will support them.
Was Ford listening? Earlier this week, Bill Ford Jr. reports that his company has fallen on hard times and is losing money by the truckload. Jon Stewart covered the story, which unfortunately was not fake news. Ford’s vehicles consume more gas on average than any other automaker at a time when Americans can’t afford to fill up their tanks, driving away customers and investors. As a result, Ford will be ‘restructuring’ by laying off 30,000 workers and shutting 14 plants in coming years. Even so, on Monday amid the layoff announcement, Bill Ford Jr. said “Excluding North America, our automotive operations made great progress in 2005; we must keep working to improve our business in each and every region.”
I have to wonder if Mr. Ford is on the same planet with the rest of us. You know, Earth, the planet where ancient glaciers and icecaps are melting, super storms, heat waves, and droughts are becoming commonplace, and environmental destruction and war can be found wherever most of the world’s oil is located. Ford fiddled away the nineties while building more, bigger SUVs, ignoring warnings that the America’s oil dependence was reaching the danger zone. Now, Ford is caught with a regressive product line and a woeful lack of innovation while Ford’s workers will pay the price.
The New York Times editorial calls on Ford to produce PHEVs
Time magazine asks “Can [Bill Ford Jr.] Save The American Auto Industry?�
Send a letter to the editor of the New York Times or Time
4 Responses to “Plug-in Hybrids leaving Ford in the Dust”
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January 28th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
I have a suggestion: Everyone in the US should boycott Ford until they
1. Start designing smart cars. Like producing a Ford which could compete with Toyota’s Prius;
2. Quit producing the most gas-guzzling monsters on the road;
3. Develop alternate jobs for the 30,000 people laid off.
4. Wake-up SUV driving Americans. Driving the biggest SUV on the block is not sexy or cool. It’s no longer gutsy to be seen as a bully – a monstercar.
We can turn these giant corporations around if we use our buying power. I wouldn’t even look at a Ford. If Bill Ford thinks it’s bad now, wait til next year.
He’s supposed to be an environmentalist who can’t control his family’s company. What a lame excuse for his 4 years of disastrous decisions! He should turn disaster to opportunity and build smart cars.
The place to begin is with the Ford Board of Directors. They are there just to give more money to the richest people in the company. And they probably arrived in gas guzzlers.
April 23rd, 2006 at 4:03 pm
I can’t be bothered with anything these days, but such is life. I don’t care. So it goes. More or less nothing seems worth thinking about. I’ve just been hanging out waiting for something to happen, but that’s how it is.
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