jmueller065 said:
pjam3 said:
It failed miserably because Ford just never seemed interested in selling it, but regardless of the reason, it's a failure to have a car that nobody buys. And maybe that's what Ford wanted all along, who knows.
Its only a failure in
your eyes. Using Ford's measures (at least the ones they've publicly stated) its a smashing success. I would bet that its been too successful in Ford's eyes (I'm sure there are many gearheads in Ford that secretly or not so secretly wished that the FFEs would just sit on lots not being sold so the company could discontinue it and they could say: "See EVs aren't that popular we don't need to build one"):
- Ford has said all along that they won't sell many (check: successful)
- They haven't marketed it at all and yet they still sell close to 2000/year (Look at the other cars that get a larger marketing budget, check)
- They sell every FFE they build by any measure that is a successful car
- As mentioned above Ford now has free beta testing from many happy customers (but not all as pjam3 is a good example)
Ford doesn't really have to ask any of us about the car since all of our driving data is uploaded to them anyway. Now who's opinions are important here? Industry? nope, Media? nope, pjam3's? nope, mine? nope, Ford's? Yes
Sounds like you work for ford.
A company who purposely doesn't want to sell a car and never actually tries to sell it, is a failure. It's called business. Just because you and a few thousand people like it, doesn't make it a success. And so if many executives at Ford never wanted to sell the FFE, they won. The people who want the FFE to succeed failed. If it started out as selling 100 cars a month and by 2015 they were selling 1000 per month and couldn't keep up, that is success despite Ford not wanting it to be. But just because you refuse to believe in the reality of a whats actually going on, doesn't mean it's true.
And a company selling 85 and 150 and so on cars in a month is not a success no matter what you try to tell yourself. The executives at Ford who don't want to sell the FFE won that battle because they are a business and nobody is buying the FFE. Simple fact. Doesn't matter the reason behind it, it's just the reality.
As far as the data, sorry but 2000 cars isn't exactly a great way to collect data. It's a start, but a small sample. It's such a limited use case, that it won't serve that much of a point in the long run. If Ford actually wanted to learn anything from the data, it would make more sense if they were selling like the Model S or Nissan Leaf. Those cars have tons of users and tons of real data. Ford has about 2000 users.
And the reality is even though Ford has been at the forefront of some of the latest and greatest technology efforts, the reality is they haven't exactly utilized all of the data or been able to analyze it. They are trying to and its a big reason why they opened a bigger tech office in Silicon Valley. They hired a new CDO and are trying to change the culture, but assuming just because you drive their electric car that they are analyzing everything about it is kind of funny. Many of these companies like to market these things, most just collect the data and run standard reports. I do give them credit because they want to hire data scientists, data engineers, and want to become an "Amazon, Apple, Google" of the Auto world. They want to change their culture.
But they aren't close to actually being able to analyze all the sensor data that is collected. And that's on all the other cars and systems, much less the FFE. Just because they collect it, doesn't mean they actually analyze it all. They aren't Tesla and even Tesla has challenges. And that's not exactly a Ford or Tesla problem, thats pretty much an every company problem.
Yeah Listening to some marketing stories is great, but it's mostly PR. Many of these companies talk big stories in the media, at conferences, but most of them aren't doing nearly as much as they like to market. They want to and they have a plan to do so, but 99 percent of them, including Ford, aren't actually close to doing it yet.
But hey keep telling yourself what you need to believe.
