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Ford’s Boss Wants Internal Combustion Engines Back After More Than €2 Billion In EV Investment
It is abundantly clear that bad decisions always take their toll in the end. Ford is only now beginning to understand this after investing more than €2 billion in electric cars and unnecessarily sacrificing the classic models on which the brand has based its business and image for decades.
Apart from luxury brands, few “folk” brands have done well with the transition to electric cars. Ford is not, and better times are not expected shortly either.
The legacy left by Martin Sanders, the former head of the brand in Europe, is a difficult situation that seriously threatens the viability of the former most productive car factory in Germany.
Under Sanders, Ford has spent a staggering more than €2 billion to convert an internal combustion engine car factory to electric, where the electric Explorer and new Capri are currently produced. Gunnar Herrmann, a member of the supervisory board of the Ford factory in Cologne, is aware that bad decisions have taken a heavy toll.
Ford’s survival depends on petrol engines and that is clear to the head of Ford. In statements made by Herrmann to the German press, he was more than clear when asked about the production of electric cars at the plant he is responsible for, noting that current production is too small to justify the plant’s two-shift operation.
Herrmann did not stop there, because he also sent a warning to the brand managers in the United States that the European branch should necessarily stick to gas-powered engines.
When asked about the intense rumours about the new Fiesta, Herrmann pointed out that the new budget model will be created based on market research.
It turns out that Ford’s biggest problem is Volkswagen and the Chinese manufacturers. Ford fell into a trap set by Volkswagen, whose visionary chairman realized that electric cars were the immediate future. The similarities between Sanders and Herbert Diess are more than obvious, but with one important difference: while the Wolfsburg company has maintained its strategy of selling cars with engines, Sanders has gone one step further to overtake the German giant.
Instead of counting on flexibility in business, Sanders did the opposite. It shut down the Fiesta prematurely and laid the groundwork to do the same with the Focus, which will disappear in 2025. Now the management of Ford in the USA refuses to reconsider the decision. Jim Farley is just as responsible for Ford’s dire situation in Europe as Sanders.
Herrmann knows that Ford will disappear from Europe if things don’t change. Chinese brands are already closer to affirmation in Europe and that is another problem, but he is convinced that electric cars should have arrived when it was possible to make money from them, and not lose at the start with them as is currently happening.
