Ford won't build a battery production factory

Why change something that is good enough and you can sell in volume?

Toyota and Lexus still sell hybrids with NiMh, it's obvious people don't care too much about it, it's conservative but proven Technology, for targeted application. Toyota sold 15 Million hybrids, the majority with NiMh bateries, what does that mean to $1 Billion investment? $66 per hybrid car, don't make me laugh.

Vertical integration is the key, without that you are just a brand making stickers for the cars that were build by someone else.

If this was truly a mistake, Toyota would not continue doing the same thing with Li-Ion tech and they are. I would also ask Thai-Tang, how come that Toyota is worth almost 7 times more than Ford and have P/E ratio of 8.1, where Ford has negative EPS.

Ford is going down, the only thing that is keeping them alive is pickup segment and new Bronco.

 

that is why tesla stock is almost $500. and ford is $7.00 in a nutshell. one hundred years in business tends to petrify corporate think
if they ever make it to $7.50 again, i have an order in to sell my 1,000 shares, same as my gm, which i dumped when it spiked one day

i didn't mind owning them until they suspended dividends

 

Toyota invested in NiMH in order to ensure they had a supply for the lowest cost. The level of the investment may have lead to a case of sunk cost fallacy though. Toyota has been putting NiMH into hybrids when Li-ion may have been lower cost. They are also late to investing into Li-ion.

In the case of Ford, it is simply a case of not having the capital to make their own battery factory. they've been using Li-ion in hybrids for years, so I expect them to have supplies lined up to meet demand. At least better than Toyota has with the Rav4 Prime.

 

it means buerys/customers are stuck - & depending on a battery element that is more expensive to manufacture into a battery, heavier to lug around in a car ... more prone to memory issues & a less efficient / more costly to buy gas for. Other than that? Yea, they're relatively robust anyway. Just not as great a deal as lithium chemestries - that are nearly down to $100/kWh. People don't care? yea ... fortunately many are ignorant that their efficiency could be even higher. But if you are happy w/ 50+ mpg? Then yea ... people don't care.
.

 

ford fusion hybrid may have been a better car than camry hybrid.

the only problem? it was a ford

 

I think @Trollbait had it. Battery factory would be nice but they just don't have the capital to pull it off.

Hey, they sold plenty of cars as a BYO gasoline arrangement, maybe they can get away with selling EV cars on a BYO battery deal.

 

Simply not true what you are saying. I have EU spec gen 4 Prius, all EU Prii come with NiMh. After one year I'm getting 58 MPG, previously with gen. 3 I got 50 MPG (7 year average). Father in-law have new Corolla TS with Li-ion, it simply can't compete with my Prius, but that is not question of battery, but overall car efficiency (17" wheels, aero drag...). The only real world difference (in HEV application) is weight.

Toyota is stuck with the NiMh capacity they planned some 10 years ago. For couple of years now, they are investing in Li-ion. So they have around ~1.5 GWh capacity in NiMh. That is nothing compared to what is needed in Li-Ion capacity in the coming years. They can still produce 1 million normal hybrids on the "old tech" and sell them with profit. But additionally they plan to sell the 4 million HEV, PHEV and BEV on new li-ion tech. They will be needing something like 50 GWh Li-Ion capacity at the very least.

But still, I think it's obvious that Toyota is delaying with Li-Ion, either they don't need to invest heavily (they have enough "Eco" and CO2 credits from hybrids) or they plan to wait until their solid-state tech is ready and then invest heavily.

Either way, currently it seems that Toyota is too much waiting for the demand and then they respond
accordingly, hopefully they won't run out their li-ion supply when demand gets higher and higher.

 

In the US most Prius trims are Lithium too. I have a 2017 NiMH Gen 4 and get about the same 58 MPG as you. I paid less for the lower US trim though.

 

That's an awfully big business. It's like saying the only thing keeping Apple alive is their technology segment.

 

No, It's like Apple had only profit with iPhone and all other segments would be making 0% profit, just to be present on the market. And slowly Apple would be left only with iPhone and kill all other products. I wonder what stock market would say to that.

Quote:

Ford produces around 100.000 Mustangs worldwide per year, now they are saying they won't even produce that many EVs, let alone Mustang Mach-e

 

If the demand isn't there, I can't really blame them for holding back on building the means of supply.

 

That is the question though, is there enough demand for more?
I say there is not only enough, but potential for a huge amount more.

However, I agree with others that Ford simply doesn’t have the funds to build their own battery factory. Due to fiscal realities they will be a follower in the EV market.

 

But how real is that demand? I mean I'd love one, along with some unicorn steaks and some 100 year cognac.

On the other hand, I'm hardly driving at all, I see a massive economic crisis looming, wondering if it's worth buying a can of paint to touch up the house or not.

It's going to be a good while before I put any money into a car, and probably longer before I can afford to buy anything other than the simplest.

 

There is more difference than weight going on. The Corolla hybrids can be had with a 2L engine as oppose to the 1.8L.

Toyota is not taking full advantage of Li-ion in their hybrids. The packs are sized to have an usable capacity near that of the NiMH packs. This reduces weight and cost, but they could have installed a larger capacity Li-ion without increasing weight and cost over the NiMH. Which would have improved overall efficiency and performance of the car.

They already ran out of battery supply for the Rav4 Prime.

Ford isn't killing off products, just cancelling them in markets where they aren't profitable. I think some of those decisions are short sighted, but they aren't exclusive to Ford. Toyota out sourced North American Yaris production to Mazda, and has cancelled the model in the US for the same reasons. Ford sells actual cars elsewhere. The US would have had the Focus equivalent to the Corolla Cross already if not for a little trade war with China. They still get the four or five versions of the Focus.

The Mach-e and Escape/Explorer PHEVs just came out. Of course they won't sell a 100k in the first couple of years. The Mustang has history going back to the early 1960's. They aren't Tesla with 400k cash deposits for a BEV not yet in production. Ford is shifting more models to hybrids(mild and full) along with plug ins. These changes to production take money. having a battery factory does no good if you can't make the cars. Some of these statements are for saving face from the fact that Ford is broke. it wasn't too long ago that they pawned off their name to stay a float.

Regardless of demand level for plug ins, supply will take time to ramp up. Ford has limited resources. Not having their own battery supply could hurt them in the near future, but battery supply is only a short term concern.

 

Again, that is a fair question.
Even if we take that you aren’t going to buy a car in the next year, there are another 12-16 Million that are buying cars.

The market for electric cars is growing quickly. Electric vehicles still have 90-95% of the ICE market to grow into.
If Ford were to build an appealing EV/PHEV that was reliable and at a good price, I believe there would be more demand than they could handle.

 

Tesla is a 100% electric car company and even they don't have their own battery factory (their batteries are made by Panasonic and CATL in China). They are only just starting to work on their own factory after over 10 years of making cars.

Ford seems to be doing better than Toyota with batteries. They have already sold 10s of thousands of their plug-in hybrid Escape SUV (called Kuga in Europe). Whereas Toyota is selling less than 5000 of their similar RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid this year and word is they'll continue to have limitations next year due to battery shortages.

 

And Toyota says they do not make EVs due to the constraints of battery supply. Nobody wants a NiMH BEV anyway.

 

In Europe Corolla:
1.8 TS and HB comes with Li-Ion
1.8 SD comes with NiMh (similar to your american version)
2.0 comes with NiMh (availible only in TS and HB)
You can't really compare MPG between these different cars, so I don't know exactly what your point was.

I doubt that. You must understand that for Hybrid you need higher power cells, getting 20 C charge and discharge rate is your normal driving in hybrid, try doing that with EV cells. For instance, if you would pack Panasonic/Tesla cells in the same space, you may cram in 2 kWh of capacity, how would that work when you would demand 20 kW of power? It would translate to Tesla Model 3 LR shelling out 750 kW of power. Same with charging, I haven't seen a Tesla charging from regen with 750 kW.

Without a charge plug there is no real benefit if you add more capacity to the battery. Going over the long hills to regen the whole capacity is not exactly everyday driving scenario.