Ford Ousted Its CEO And Is Doubling Down On Self-Driving Cars (qz.com) 122
An anonymous reader shares a report: At a press conference today, Ford announced that it had replaced CEO Mark Fields with Jim Hackett, director of the company's autonomous-car research. Previously the CEO of furniture company Steelcase (and a former athletic director at the University of Michigan), Hackett took a seat on Ford's board in 2013. He has been running the company's Smart Mobility subsidiary since March 2016. Smart Mobility is tasked with securing Ford's long-term future. The division houses Ford's self-driving car program, which plans to start ferrying employees around its Dearborn, Michigan campus in 2018. Outgoing CEO Mark Fields previously said that Ford would sell autonomous vehicles to consumers by 2025. [...] Hackett is expected to continue the push into self-driving cars. "We have to re-energize our business, we need to modernize our business," executive chairman Bill Ford said about the company's initiatives into new technologies at the conference.
Whatever (Score:2)
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Nobody uses zipcars anymore because they're not available
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Whatever gets me closer to a car that materializes in my driveway as soon as I open my front door, which will be tailored to meet all my requirements for a vehicle and take me everywhere I want to go for a $1.
Other than the ridiculous price point, nothing you asked for is very far fetched once autonomous cars become a thing. Give the car service 10 minutes to find a car with the prerequisite number of seats / child seats and one is waiting for you when you open your front door. Transform the glove box to a safety deposit box stored at a depot in your neighborhood with personal effects like sun glasses and you car is always equipped and ready to go.
$1 is certainly just hyperbole, but at somewhere between $10-$20
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And I wouldn't personally like to wait 10 minutes for a ride. For me the thing about owning is that you can walk out to your driveway without waiting.
You personally don't have to wait 10 minutes for a ride, since I doubt you will be forced to forego having a car. I on the other hand doubt there is a single time I just needed to rush out of the house with no notice in the last year. Even when my daughter broke her leg it took us time to get diaper bags and other incidentals for both of our kids ready, and if this really became commonplace there would probably be some kind of 911 service with 5x the cost but will be there immediately.
If I wanted to wait, have a cheap ride, and not have to drive, then I would be taking a bus already.
Most people don't even
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This idea of autonomous cars being a simple call away within 10 minutes is something only available in a city which does have buses. It will not be available to those who do not live in cities unless you are willing to pay hundreds of dollars and willing to wait for hours.
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This idea of autonomous cars being a simple call away within 10 minutes is something only available in a city which does have buses. It will not be available to those who do not live in cities unless you are willing to pay hundreds of dollars and willing to wait for hours.
It may not be available to people whose closest neighbors tend to be a quarter mile away (like the farm I grew up in), but in the suburbs it is quite feasible. The nearest small town to my father's farm was about 10 square miles with 12,000 people. An unused autonomous car on the other side of town could be at your house in 10 minutes.
The total number of cars necessary will be determined by rush hour needs. This will provide more than enough available cars for any unplanned trips throughout the day, regardl
As a shareholder... (Score:2)
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The dividend will be slashed soon.
Slashing the dividend will probably decrease the share price even further. If so, I'll probably buy more shares out of pocket.
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If the stock price itself is hammered, and then the company slashes the dividend, in what way is that an investment?
Depends on the fundamentals. Why does a stock get hammered? Why does the dividend get slashed? What's the short-term and long-term prospects?
Wall Street has a short-term mentality. I'm playing the long game.
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That wouldn't be too bad. I'd wind up just buying more Ford shares as a stock to keep and hold.
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Haven't you heard?! Tesla will control the automotive industry by 2020!
At $300+ per share and no P/E, I'll pass. This is one of those stocks that you buy a share of to impress your friends and family. That only works if they know next to nothing about stocks. I had a roommate who was so proud that he owned a share of Oracle prior to the dot com bust, and he got mad when I pointed out a half-dozen dividend-paying stocks that were a better investment. IIRC, he only made $11 in profit after selling it off.
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Radical islam will load it full of anfo with a remote camera and detonator and use it as a guided missile to wage jihad. Ford will be sued and the cars will be outlawed.
Except they'll both chase you and backtrack where you came from, how many terrorists successfully escape even if they don't do it as a suicide mission? They mostly end up in some kind of shootout/hostage situation shortly after, like the Boston marathon bombers, San Bernardino, the Christmas market attack in Berlin etc. so I figure for the most part jihadists will simply drive themselves. Failing that you can much easier make an "RC car" with a dummy, dash cam and a bit of hydraulics to push the pedals. Did
Re:take my money (Score:4, Interesting)
That's actually a good point, in that vehicle performance matters a lot less when the occupant does not directly operate the vehicle. Performance is no unimportant; most people want to be conveyed to their destinations in reasonable amounts of time and don't like unnecessary waiting, but if one looks back on the late seventies during the fallout from the OPEC oil embargo, most full-sized cars had less than 200 horsepower while weighing in at over two tons and they still managed to sell. Even what were considered mainstream performance or sports cars of the '60s and early '70s have acceleration rates that can be met by most mid-market, "boring" cars today.
If true autonomous vehicles become the norm, I fully expect that the entire nature of auto body design will change. The traditional three-box design of sedans and coupes and two-box design of wagons, SUVs, vans will almost undoubtedly be re-examined as there will no longer be a need for the driver to face forward, and if powertrain efficiency continues to improve then there may be less need to continue streamlining. While autonomous vehicles and driver-controlled vehicles are mixed on the road I expect that autonomous vehicles will still have to pass crash-safety testing, but it may not be unrealistic to see fully autonomous vehicles start to re-examine traditional carriage design where occupants are able to face each other instead of everyone facing forward, and you could even see tabletops inside of vehicles that are intended for long over-the-road travel.
If petroleum-burning powertrains continune to increase in efficiency, then it's not unreasonble to consider relocating a smaller, barely-adequate powertrain to under the passenger compartment rather than in front of it, similar to the old Skateboard concept [autoblog.com] that GM worked on in the early noughties, especially if they do a more thorough job of divorcing the duties of the body control module and the powertrain control module such that some bolts and a single umbilicle connect the passenger body from the chassis. Service would be rolling the car into a bay, securing the lift to the body, unbolting the body and the umbilicle, lifting the body off, and having room to work on the chassis. Boxer-type horizontally-opposed engines would fit this chassis well. Obviously electric drivetrains would be even easier.
Future vehicle development would probably center on the configuration of the passenger compartment along with amenities, while attempting to define vehicle exteriors that meet expectations but don't necessarily have to exceed them for most buyers. If one looks at vehicle design now and historically, everyone follows each others' leads anyway, so it would be no stretch to assume that future autonomous passenger cars would continue to follow suit where everyone mimicks everyone else with the occasional halo-car coming out to stir-up interest.
It'll be interesting to see what happens long-term.
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I don't expect autonomous cars to have ridiculously low speeds. 100hp can get you up to freeway speeds and conduct you at those speeds on flat terrain. 150hp with proper gearing is likely plenty for driving at-speed in hilly areas, assuming a reasonable amount of passenger weight.
Autonomous vehicles will not need 300hp to smartly merge onto the freeway and drive with-traffic at 70mph speeds.
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Not everyone has the same needs. Besides, not every vehicle right now is expected to or is even capable of pulling a trailer anyway.
I fully expect those who use their vehicles for more than just passenger transportation will not find wholly-autonomous vehicles appropriate to their needs. For those there will continue to be other kinds of vehicles, and those other kinds of vehicles will probably offer both autonomous and conventional driving modes.
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What slower cars?
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To quote myself,
I don't expect autonomous cars to have ridiculously low speeds. 100hp can get you up to freeway speeds and conduct you at those speeds on flat terrain. 150hp with proper gearing is likely plenty for driving at-speed in hilly areas, assuming a reasonable amount of passenger weight.
Autonomous vehicles will not need 300hp to smartly merge onto the freeway and drive with-traffic at 70mph speeds.
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Reluctance to use the power at one's disposal an the power itself are not the same thing.
I've seen people in 5-series BMWs obstruct traffic, and people in 116hp 1990 Mazda Miatas set the pace.
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Why would they drive slowly? I expect that they'd drive the way that the manufacturer sets them out to drive, and without a human at the controls they'd probably accelerate as quickly as the automaker figures the occupants will accept, and drive as fast as the occupants will accept.
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I can see that. With traffic now, there isn't a need for 2 second 0-60 times. What is needed is fuel economy, being able to handle being stopped and using as little fuel as possible, and being comfortable to handle the two hour commute caused by a jack-knifed semi or some drunk who flipped their vehicle.
Horsepower has improved since the 1990s. The days of a Geo Metro or Mazda GLC holding up an entire line of traffic on a highway merge are long gone. Almost any car these days can merge safely onto US roa
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You're looking at the situation like there's only one problem and only one solution.
Sport Utility Vehicles that are actual 4x4s with offroad capability, commercial trucks including light trucks (ie, pickups), and long-haul vehicles will probably retain the option of an internal combustion engine, as these vehicles are may all be used in situations where there's no access to electrical infrastructure to recharge batteries, where the mass for batteries is too cumbersome, or where the amount of time to recharg
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If ICE cars can be rented for road trips, absolutely. For multi-car households, absolutely. For those that feel it is acceptable to stop at the modern-equivalent of rural diner and gas station to have the car charged-up while having a meal, absolutely.
Remember, electric cars have very little maintenance compared to fossil-fuel powered cars. There are simply less consumed lubricants, and many systems that use hydraulics or other fluids or mechanical processes are going to use electric processes. Even thi
Re:take my money (Score:4, Insightful)
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Then congratulations, you will continue to fall into the 20-30% range for at least one vehicle in your household.
If it's any consolation I will undoubtedly find myself in the same position, partially since working on cars is a hobby of mine and since we currently have six vehicles already. I wouldn't mind for my daily-commuter and for my wife's daily-commuter to be autonomous, electric vehicles through.
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I don't think we'll see too many vehicles equipped to let the occupants do things like bathe while in-motion simply because if there is an emergency there's no good way to protect the occupants from injury. I could see a degree of portable office or entertainment center being common though, especially for those who already have the option to telecommute or for those accustomed to streaming their television content on a schedule of their choosing.
It might even be common to have breakfast or to otherwise din
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could we add special lanes for soccer moms driving minivans (or outrageously large SUV's) to keep them out of the left lane?
I feel that i'd be justified in getting a rocket launcher to 'nudge' these people out of the way, but i fear there might be some complicated legal entanglements to contend with.
There is no emotional equal to the contempt one feels at seeing a soccer mom merge onto the freeway, immediately hop into the left lane, and set their cruise control for 60 and just diddle themselves while being
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New CEO is clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
The new CEO used to work at a furniture company but is good friends with the Ford family so that's how he got his job. He knows nothing about cars or autonomous vehicles in spite of being in charge of the AV program. He's just a well connected good old boy.
I don't see how this can help. Ford needs somebody who understands cars and autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles. This guy knows nothing.
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tim cook was a logistics guy at compaq. how did that turn out? now he makes phones and runs a hugely profitable online store. Furniture had it's own rent a couch model, if they want to make cars the same way then hiring someone from another line of business makes sense.
Re: New CEO is clueless (Score:1)
Hahahahaha Tim Cook. Riding on the coat tails of greatness and success. Steve Jobs was an ass hole but he made $Apple. Tim Cook will run out of crap that was already in the works during the Jobs era and fizzle out. RIP Apple (even if it will take forever due to their cash reserves and foot print).
Re:New CEO is clueless (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had some great managers who do not know the difference between a for loop and a variable. I've had other managers who have been in the industry for 30 years, starting out with punch cards and Fortran who were terrible managers.
Here's an example George Steinbrenner didn't know anything about baseball but he was a good CEO of the NY Yankees. (As a Met fan it pains me to say it, but it's true.)
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The new CEO used to work at a furniture company but is good friends with the Ford family so that's how he got his job. He knows nothing about cars or autonomous vehicles in spite of being in charge of the AV program. He's just a well connected good old boy. I don't see how this can help. Ford needs somebody who understands cars and autonomous vehicles and electric vehicles. This guy knows nothing.
Ford has often had incompetent leadership. Maybe finding a way to have less Ford family influence is a good thing.
It's kind of strange that in the Great Recession the general idea was that Ford was the only American car manufacturer that knew what it was doing and now they are slashing jobs (By the way, where's the outrage from the president?) and seem completely clueless. Do consumers want to buy autonomous cars? Seems like a risky bet to me. Young people will just use Uber/Lyft/etc. and have some
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The car of the future is an autonomous electric vehicle.
The future is starting... now.
Ford is way behind.
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Look at most tech companies under tech knowledgable leaders and under "bean counters".
Take Apple under Jobs vs. Scully... no contest.
Take Microsoft under Gates vs. Balmer... no contest
HP under Carly Fiorina... I rest my case.
Fortunately, companies such as Facebook, Tesla, Twitter, AirBnB and others still have their original tech savvy founders.
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Yes and Mulally worked at Boeing and did a fantastic job at running Ford.
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Being a CEO is more about pushing around the money, then actually knowing the details of the product. That said, an automaker company seems to be far more complex then even a large furniture company. A choice to use cheaper parts in furniture often will not have the same impact to human lives as a similar choice for an automobile. Because if that stitch that holds the leather on your sofa fails vs a bolt holding a vital component has a different set of consequences. Also to the note the Automotive indus
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Being a CEO is more about pushing around the money, then actually knowing the details of the product.
I think evidence would suggest that is how many American companies including car manufacturers have run into problems. People with a business background do a good job of squeezing profits out of a successful business, however they seem to inevitably end up playing catch-up to the market.
The CFO's job to push money around, its the CEOs job to understand the market, the products and how to allocate the resources. I don't see how someone can effectively do this without working their way up through the business
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Oh joy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just imagine the new wave of proprietary software Ford's going to try to jam down our throats. Unauditable software/firmware in a vehicle is simply unacceptable. Until that changes, we really should not trust these companies with our lives. I hope that someone (looking at you, Tesla) creates an international foundation to handle the development of safe, Free software to run on our vehicles. Even the tech in manually controlled vehicles is dangerous and frightening. Things only will continue to get worse as cars become more and more autonomous unless we put a stop to it now!
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I'll bite. Free software is cool and everything, most of my stuff is running on it. But do you really want all the different car safety stuff to be open? Didn't they ditch a Jeep by remote last year? My car (1999 Grand Marquis LS) is not open to that kind of hacking. Sure, it doesn't have anything fancy like bluetooth or remote software update, but the software that runs the car is pretty safe from malware. I'd like my next car to be like that...
I love open software, but since so many eyeballs can look at t
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I love open software, but since so many eyeballs can look at the code, do I really want that in my car? (because the many eyeballs stuff)
I would rather have many companies working on one solid OS than the many mixed disparate crap-fests that we have in cars now.
I agree that my infotainment system should be completely separate and distinct from ALL mechanical control (e.g. gas, brake, steering).
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Just imagine the new wave of proprietary software Ford's going to try to jam down our throats.
How is that different from the status quo? I'll admit I don't track what Ford does with a great deal of interest, but has any car manufacturer released the source to anything - including traction control, stability control, ABS brakes, airbags, throttle control, temperature control, electronic suspension, electronic transmission, valve timing... the list goes on and on.
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Look, I'd love to see the software used in these sorts of things go open source as well, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to suggest that it's "unacceptable", when we already accept closed source in plenty of other devices that have life-and-death stakes.
For instance, when was the last time you saw the source code for traffic lights, elevators, trains, or x-ray machines? Any of those could result in life-threatening injuries or death if the software malfunctioned in just the wrong way* (e.g. Therac-25 [wikipedia.org],
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Are you talking about Microsoft Sync? The infotainment system? That's hardly the same as software used to make decisions that have the potential to kill you if they go wrong.
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The problem with that analysis is that you're not taking into account the massive capital investment needed to produce cars with any real output. Sure the existing manufacturers are behind the curve on electrical storage/generation. Tesla however, is even farther behind on manufacturing.
A Ford/GM/Kia plant could outpace Tesla's entire production with a single lane at any of their manufacturing plants. Even if the industry winds up paying a royalty fee and piggybacking off of Tesla's infrastructure, they'l
dealership only service with self driving cars (Score:2)
dealership only service with self driving cars
Used cars will beceom soooo cheap (Score:2)
FTA: Ford is facing a glut of used cars on the market, which makes it easy for consumers to find affordable recent models instead of buying new cars.
Perfecting AI for self-driving cars is a long way off. Idiots (other drivers) are extremely inventive.
RE the quote FTA: YES. This fact means that the economics of buying a gas car will shift rapidly, especially as self-driving and electrics take a big chunk of the market. Skipping the guts of the microeconomics argument:
I think it can be safely said that we are stuck on gasoline cars as a major percentage of the public fleet for two or three decades, minimum.
Cheaper gas, cheaper parts for repair (used or after-market), people with the skills to maintain aging vehicles exist already. If economic times are tight, people are going to make a choice against their conscience and opt for the far-cheaper (future) option of a used gasoline car.
Oh! Unless we crush them all like GM did with all of the EV1's. That prevented any aftermarket from ever developing. Smashy smashy!
Auto company death spiral (Score:4, Insightful)
Self driving cars are a death spiral for car companies.
The liability will be too great. Every accident will be the "car's fault" and result in litigation. Eventually a software bug will bankrupt one of the car companies.
They are primarily useful for "fleet" sales not consumer sales and will kill profit margins.
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On top of the above the 1% market doesn't want a Ferrari that you don't get to drive.
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Irony, per guy who fouled up the slashdot quoting (me). Viva Mondays.
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I really don't understand how liability can be "too great". All businesses involves risk, sometimes massive risk, but by testing and qualifying designs that risk can be reduced to the extent which is reasonable. Most of the remaining small risk is dealt with via insurance. If the cost of that insurance exceeds what a consumer can pay for a product then the product is not sold.
Liability exceeding the insurance policy or not covered by the insurance is dealt with by pursuing company assets to the point of b
New Driving Paradigm (Score:2)
I imagine there's lots of old leadership at Ford who insist that there's be a smooth orderly transition to autonomous cars that they'll be all over. However, if things go more like how Lyft expects, they could be in trouble. Their best-selling vehicle (and the USA's best-selling vehicle, for over a decade straight, last I heard) is the F150 pickup truck. 95% of the time I see someone in an F150, it has 1 passenger and isn't hauling anything that wouldn't fit in the back of a Prius (fold down the back seat,
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>> I suspect that soccer moms will keep the SUV, and rideshare to replace their sedan when they drive themselves around,
So you're being all pragmatic about the actual need for flatbed trucks, but then you say Moms will keep their off-road vehicles for the school run? Also I'm honestly not seeing many women allowing strangers in their cars whenever they have a spare seat. Most women aren't very frugal at all especially when it comes to perceived convenience or luxuries.
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That's right. If you have 3 kids in the backseat, 2 in baby seats, watching a DVD on the entertainment console, munching crackers and getting crumbs everywhere, ridesharers won't be very willing to accomodate that. And by 'ridesharing' I mean 'Johnny Cab', it'll go autonomous faster than the semi-truck hauling sector.
Electric sedan first (Score:2)
Ford really is doubling down on stupidity. (Score:2)
First, they detune cars and throw in a turbocharger, now they want to try making it blander than a salt-free cracker.
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the list goes on and on...
As it does for human drivers now too.
The difference being, once a problem has been solved (or worked around) in an automated vehicle, *all* of those same vehicles (and potentially everything from that manufacturer) should be able to download and use the fix.
Try doing that with humans.
That list of problems is now a checkbox of projects. Some may never be solved, and would require human intervention no matter what. I expect the vast majority though would be resolved however.
Somewhere in there is a cru