Ford is laying off about 700 workers who build the F-150 Lightning, the electric version of its best-selling pickup truck, and unlike other recent layoffs this one has nothing to do with the ongoing strike by the United Auto Workers union.

Ford lays off 700 who were building electric version of F-150 | CNN Business::Ford is laying off about 700 workers who build the F-150 Lightning, the electric version of its best-selling pickup truck, and unlike other recent layoffs this one has nothing to do with the ongoing strike by the United Auto Workers union.

  • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1382·
    8 months ago

    Wow. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like Ford’s future is going to be a struggle.

    You can’t simultaneously be late to a growing market, back out of a growing market, and refuse to invest in a growing market and hope to succeed…can you?

    • Great MehEnglish
      877·
      8 months ago

      Well you can if you trust the government to bail you out .

        • AnarchoDakosaurus@toast.oooEnglish
          655·
          8 months ago

          A Ford TV ad slams competitors for accepting bailout funds, even though the company’s CEO lobbied for the bill. The company — the only one of the Big Three not to receive a bailout — feared a collapse of GM and Chrysler at the time would have hurt suppliers and, in turn, Ford itself. Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan R. Mulally also asked Congress for a “credit line” of up to $9 billion in case the economy worsened. In other words, Ford was for government bailouts before it was against them.

          And ford took more money from Biden’s green energy plan. Ford is definitely guilty as fuck as slurping up government surplus and firing workers the second they stop making them a profit.

          • stealthnerd@lemmy.worldEnglish
            214·
            8 months ago

            I love how the OP said Ford never took a bailout, you reply confirming that, and OP gets downvoted into oblivion.

            • TheRealKuni@lemmy.worldEnglish
              135·
              8 months ago

              I love how the OP said Ford never took a bailout, you reply confirming that, and OP gets downvoted into oblivion.

              Welcome to Lemmy. I swear this place is worse than Reddit at reading comprehension and mob-mentality downvoting.

            • CmdrShepard@lemmy.oneEnglish
              11·
              8 months ago

              They didn’t confirm that Ford didn’t receive a bailout just that Ford didn’t participate in TARP. Ford took a $7B government loan in 2009 and didn’t even finish repaying it until last year. GM took their $8B bailout in 2009 and repaid it all in 2010.

              https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-government-loan-department-energy-debt/5526413002/

              I love all the high-horse “downvoting, mob-mentality, poor reading comprehension” comments in this thread when none of these people bothered to do more than read a single comment and click one link before assuming they had a full understanding of the facts.

              • AA5B@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                8 months ago

                Right there is the difference between Lemmy and Reddit!

                Lemmy: 15 downvotes to oblivion

                Reddit: Hold my beer!

                • Kedly@lemm.eeEnglish
                  2·
                  8 months ago

                  Yeah, I guess there is a pretty significant population difference between the two. Sorry, I’m a new convert from Reddit xD

    • AnarchoDakosaurus@toast.oooEnglish
      593·
      8 months ago

      I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like Ford’s future is going to be a struggle.

      They completely killed making any cars smaller then Trucks or SUV’s in North America and I really hope it comes back to fuck them.

      I’m not crying that they won’t make Ford Focuses anymore or whatever, but pretty much only people left to buy affordable, small cars from anymore is the Japanese and Koreans.

      Good riddance to Ford. They long outlived their usefulness.

      • psycho_driver@lemmy.worldEnglish
        181·
        8 months ago

        but pretty much only people left to buy affordable, small cars from anymore is the Japanese and Koreans.

        A big reason for that was that American car makers never figured out how to make decent small cars and were getting murdered by their Japanese and Korean competition.

          • psycho_driver@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            8 months ago

            Funny you should mention those two. In the US market they both shipped with a quite defective Ford-developed DCT that would rarely last 50,000 miles before failing. I do not believe whatever the problem is with these transmissions are fixable because the replacements will also fail short of 50,000 miles. I actually own two Fiesta’s, one with the 1.0l ecoboom which is currently dead at 84,000 miles due to the plastic used within the engine getting brittle and failing and causing it to catastrophically overheat very quickly (just about all of these 1.0s will fail between 75,000 and 85,000 from what I’ve seen). I also have a i4/manual version which is about to hit 200,000 miles and runs great. The key in the US market is to get a 5 speed version if you want mostly trouble free ownership. The Fiesta is almost the perfect small car that was mostly ruined due to cost cutting in areas that there shouldn’t be any cost cutting happening.

        • SmoothIsFast@citizensgaming.comEnglish
          2·
          8 months ago

          No its because they have less safety and ecological regulations on trucks, as SUVs use truck platforms they no longer have to abide by the same set of regulations and production becomes cheaper. It’s always been motivated by profit…

      • hardcoreufo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        8 months ago

        You should blame the EPA for that as well. Their policies incentivize the making of large ass trucks. So the US car manufacturers push them and abandon small cars.

        • SmoothIsFast@citizensgaming.comEnglish
          4·
          8 months ago

          Trucks had regulations for a purpose as they were deemed a utility vehicle for doing a certain set of jobs. Capitalism seeking profit noticed if they can have consumers like SUVs they can use the same regulations as trucks to save cost and increase profit. This is not an uncommon tactic in Capitalism and we have no laws saying it’s illegal, you would need congress to give the EPA the ability to go after car companies skirting regulations by manipulating public perceptions to favor suvs and considering how in bed congress is with these big companies that’s never gonna happen in the current political landscape we have, not to mention how do you prove that in court. The problem is we as a people have stopped getting involved and slowly watched as are rights writhered away all because we got seduced by convience.