The Split Personalities of Ford (USA vs. Europe)

While Ford is losing billions and watching its market share shrink in the US, it is introducing really efficient cars in Europe, like the 63.6 MPG ECOnetic Diesel Fiesta. If Ford was to introduce this car in North-America, even at a loss, even in small numbers, it would help it regain momentum and credibility, kind of like how the Toyota Prius hybrid (over 1 million units sold) probably wasn't very profitable (if at all) at first, but it paved the way for what followed.

Now of course Ford will respond that it is bringing the Fiesta to North-America. Just wait a year and a half (if all goes well).

But by that time, will Ford be trying to catch up to plug-in hybrids (like the GM Volt, or the BYD F6DM and F3DM from China) or with electric cars (like Tesla's more affordable Model S, or Mitsubishi's i MiEV)?

Even Google is investing in plug-in vehicles!

Sometimes you have to make bold moves. Of course, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, and Ford seems to be doing that by slashing SUV production and re-tooling some factories for small car production. But will it be fast enough? The signs of a sea change in the car markets have been around for years. Ford can't afford to wait anymore; it needs to reconcile its European division with its North-American operations and offer American drivers some real choices of efficient cars and stop hoping a return to the days of $10 oil and huge Explorers.

More from Michael Graham Richard on Huffington Post
Ludicrous Lawns, Wasted Water, and Solid Solutions
Electric Cars Take Over: 17 Electric Cars You Must Know About
4 Fun Green Stories and 2 Sad Ones
Can We Power the Whole World with Solar Power?
Wind Power Success Stories
Wind Power Success Stories, Part 2
Water-Powered Cars: Possible or Impossible?
Will 2010 be the Year of the Green Car?

Comments

[theepoxyman]

Yet, Ford in America tells our congress that it is impossible to build a car that gets 35 mpg, but here they are building a car in Europe that gets 63 mpg. What is so very different about building a car over there?

[usedtowander]

It will take a while.
They have long had high fuel prices in Europe. Those prices, long ago, encouraged people to move to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.
There are few really large vehicles, other than trucks, mostly professionally driven, on the road.

In the U.S. that is not so. There are a lot of really big vehicles being driven by soccer moms, etc.

Not too long ago our daughter was driving in downtown San Diego in the Hyundai Tucson - a smaller SUV with decent mileage and excellent airbags - when she was smashed into by a woman (on her cell phone) driving a Ford F-150 four door truck (they go to the river a lot, apparently). All the airbags deployed, yet she still suffered injuries.

I don't want to imagine the injuries she would have received in a very small, very efficient hybrid car with minimal airbags and almost no frame.

Until the really big SUVs start to disappear off the road, some would consider the danger of driving a small, efficient vehicle too high to risk. Not much good to save money on fuel and save the planet if you're in a persistent vegatative state because a harried, phoning, soccer mom driving a huge truck she "needs" to pull all the family motorcycles and watercraft.

[Mogamboguru]

To use the safety-concern as an excuse NOT to switch to fuel-efficient, european-made (or, for that matter, japanese-made) cars is, with all due respect, bogus.

European cars are compulsory regularly subjected to such harsh impact-testing - which they also regularly pass with flying colours, BTW - which regularly lets also regularly fold flat or rip apart standard-US-SUV's and Pickups like a house of cards.

Compare the annual US-rate of deaths in accidents and the european rate of deaths and shudder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

Especially compare the annual rate of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in Germany (with no federal speed limit on motorways, whatsoever) at 6.2, versus the US-american annual rate of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants 14,7. See my point?

If it REALLY was for safety-concerns - then you should scramble to get into a european-safety-standard-car like HELL.

I am absolutely sure that, if she had been in an american car during her accident, your daughter may well have been killed . In the european car, instead, she may have suffered injuries, yes - but she survived, nonetheless.

QED.

[usedtowander]

I don't see your point.

Europeans may suffer far fewer fatal accidents for a number of reasons. There are many independent intervening causes for the difference. Choosing car safety standards as the difference that makes the difference assumes away all other factors.
I originally pointed out, there are far fewer very large vehicles on the road in Europe.

Vehicles, European or otherwise, are, at least the last time I checked, subject to Newton's Second Law of Resultant Force.

When a very large mass object impacts anything the resultant force will likely change the shape of a structure like a vehicle. No matter how well-designed and structued the struck vehicle is.

If you are in Stockholm driving a Volvo S80 and are struck from the side by a fully loaded Volvo tractor-trailer at 50 kph at impact, the likely result will be an unhappy one.

If you're in Los Angeles or Denver or New York driving a Prius and are struck from the side by a raised Lincoln Navigator traveling 35 mph at impact, the result to the passengers, although not as dramatic will be quite similar to the Stockholm example.

If you don't believe me, get in your Prius and try it.

[Nommo]

I always wondered why they did not sell the Mondeo over here. It was a better machine, by far, than anything they sold here. Of course, the Mondeo was not built to pass the standards imposed by the Feds.

[MajorKong]

They converted it to all-wheel-drive and sold it as the Jaguar X-Type. It was an attempt at an entry-level Jag to compete with the 3-series BMW. It didn't sell very well. Most people thought it looked too much like a Taurus from the back.