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Ford started a firestorm when it pulled the wraps off its electric Mustang Mach-E. Mustang enthusiasts were furious the company dared to brand the 4-door crossover after their beloved pony car. The Tesla fan boys sneered that it wasn’t a Tesla. Yet just about everyone else was smitten by the specs and the styling.
But for me, the most significant aspect of the Mach-E is not the car. It’s the process by which it was developed. And that process bodes well for the future of Ford and the company’s beleaguered CEO, Jim Hackett.
When Hackett took the helm in mid-2017, he found the company was deep into developing an electric “compliance car.” That’s the derogatory term given to battery-electric vehicles where automakers take an existing platform, stuff it full of batteries, and try to get enough zero-emission credits to comply with government regulations.
No one expects compliance cars to sell very well and they don’t. But they are a whole lot cheaper to do than developing dedicated BEV platforms, which is what Tesla did. And while Tesla proved a lot of people want cool electric cars, it lost a ton of money developing its own dedicated platform. From the time it went public in 2011 through the end of 2018, Tesla lost $5.6 billion. That would be the equivalent of Ford losing $42 billion. And that’s why traditional automakers do compliance cars.
Ford’s plan was essentially to stuff an Escape crossover full of batteries and call it a day. But Hackett wasn’t buying it. He wanted an EV that people would stand in line to buy and which would turn a profit. Yet that would mean tearing up a year’s worth of work and starting all over again, which would badly delay the program.
Keep in mind the original “compliance” car was going to be front-wheel drive, while the Mach-E would be rear drive with an all-wheel-drive option, as well as left- and right-hand steering. So not only were they throwing away a year’s worth of work, they were taking on a heavier engineering burden. But Hackett didn’t want to delay the original launch date. And this is where the story gets interesting.
While Hackett’s tenure has been panned by the media and Wall Street for posting weak earnings and watching Ford’s stock price sink, he got the company to change the way it develops new products, and how it manages those products. He introduced an approach that Ford calls customer-centric design, which is part of a larger process called EPLM, or Enterprise Product Line Management.
The idea behind customer-centric design is to quickly develop extremely cheap prototypes and get customer feedback to refine them. In the case of the Mach-E, the 15-person team working on the big touch screen for the center console cut out a piece of cardboard, printed out a facsimile of the screen and glued it to the cardboard. Then they showed it to customers in the U.S., Europe and China and asked them a bunch of questions.
Did they like the size of the screen? Should it be bigger or smaller? Should it be mounted up high on the console, or low? Leaned back or upright? Landscape or portrait?
They quickly settled on a 15.5-in. (394 mm) screen mounted upright in a portrait position. But they weren’t finished yet. Many of the customers said they’d really like a rotary knob for the radio volume. So, someone grabbed one of those cheap plastic Keurig k-cup coffee pods, stuck a straw through the bottom and attached it to the cardboard screen with a brass fastener. Then they asked customers what they thought. “Perfect!” customers told them. That’s how the production version ended up with a rotary knob.
From the time they cut out the cardboard to the point they settled on hard engineering specs took 90 days. Under the old product development process at Ford they would probably still be sitting in meetings.
To develop the chassis, suspension, brakes and steering they relied heavily on Ford’s racing simulator. This 3D simulator with a 26-ft. (8 m) wraparound screen is powered by 25 computers and allows engineers to quickly try out different engineering settings: spring rates, bushings, roll bars, tires and wheels, and do it all in virtual reality. This saved a ton of time. But more importantly it allowed them to dial it in to make it feel and drive like a Mustang.
That was a key challenge for the program. It had to feel and drive like a Mustang, or the company would be endangering its most iconic brand. From what I hear, company chairman Bill Ford was reluctant to badge it a Mustang. Before finally giving his OK, he made the senior executives on the team personally promise him that it would truly be a Mustang. They promised.
The EPLM process is spreading throughout Ford globally. Every major product line has its own EPLM team, which is a cross-functional, co-located group that has full profit-and-loss responsibility for their product. Moreover, they must manage it from Job One to end of production.
This likely will change product decisions. If you are responsible for a vehicle until it goes out of production, you’ll be a lot more careful to make sure it retains its residual value and isn’t plagued by warranty costs. That’s going to drive different sourcing and content decisions and the winners will be the customers.
I love Mustangs and have owned several. I would love to own another one some day. Right now with the stage of life I'm in it's just not practical to own a 2-door coupe or convertible and I don't have pockets deep enough to justify having one as a weekend driver. The Mach-E isn't and never will be an option because if I wanted a Mustang I'd get a Mustang. I'm sure Ford will sell plenty of these but I think their marketing it under the Mustang badging is a slight to generations of Mustang loyalists. And they seem to have forgotten the letter writing that saved the Mustang from becoming the Probe back in the late 1980s.
I love Mustangs and have owned several. I would love to own another one some day. Right now with the stage of life I'm in it's just not practical to own a 2-door coupe or convertible and I don't have pockets deep enough to justify having one as a weekend driver. The Mach-E isn't and never will be an option because if I wanted a Mustang I'd get a Mustang. I'm sure Ford will sell plenty of these but I think their marketing it under the Mustang badging is a slight to generations of Mustang loyalists. And they seem to have forgotten the letter writing that saved the Mustang from becoming the Probe back in the late 1980s.
they aren't REPLACING the Mustang with this, like they were going to do with the Probe. That's the goddamn difference. I've owned plenty of Mustangs, stock and modded, over the years, including a number of classic ones and I think this is a brilliant move. It EXPANDS the Mustang influence, not diminishes it.
they aren't REPLACING the Mustang with this, like they were going to do with the Probe. That's the goddamn difference. I've owned plenty of Mustangs, stock and modded, over the years, including a number of classic ones and I think this is a brilliant move. It EXPANDS the Mustang influence, not diminishes it.
I see what your saying about replacing but my point was that Mustang enthusiasts are often purists when it comes to the Mustang brand that Ford has built. The Cobra is expanding on the Mustang because it’s the same car beefed up. The Mach-E is a 4-door almost CUV and nothing remotely like a Mustang. It does diminish the brand because the brand is no longer what it initially was designed to be.
I see what your saying about replacing but my point was that Mustang enthusiasts are often purists when it comes to the Mustang brand that Ford has built. The Cobra is expanding on the Mustang because it’s the same car beefed up. The Mach-E is a 4-door almost CUV and nothing remotely like a Mustang. It does diminish the brand because the brand is no longer what it initially was designed to be.
One man’s opinion of course.
If it sells and makes Ford money they don’t care if it diminishes the brand there in the business to sell vehicles no matter what certain people think.
If it sells and makes Ford money they don’t care if it diminishes the brand there in the business to sell vehicles no matter what certain people think.
[mod cut] I’m aware of that. If it sells I doubt it’ll be a popular pick with actual Mustang fans though. Calling a 4 door car a Mustang doesn’t mean people will automatically expand their definition of the brand. My guess it’ll sell well with brand (ford not mustang specific) loyalists who want an electric option. Or people who don’t care about the name but like the product itself. In other words, I don’t think calling it a Mustang is going to be what makes it successful.
Last edited by volosong; 12-25-2019 at 09:12 AM..
Reason: no profanity, implied or expressed
[mod cut] I’m aware of that. If it sells I doubt it’ll be a popular pick with actual Mustang fans though. Calling a 4 door car a Mustang doesn’t mean people will automatically expand their definition of the brand. My guess it’ll sell well with brand (ford not mustang specific) loyalists who want an electric option. Or people who don’t care about the name but like the product itself. In other words, I don’t think calling it a Mustang is going to be what makes it successful.
We will see won’t we like I’ve said it’s their vehicle they can call a F150 a Mustang if they want to.
The Probe was not going to replace the Mustang. It was going to be "Mustang". It was much like the Mustang II debacle.
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