Ford Hammers Its Customers Again

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 31, 9:30AM EDT

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Ford Hammers Its Customers Again — © Shattered (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Bill Burris

Anyone skeptical about whether Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F | F Price Prediction) can succeed under current management should note that it now has changed the price for its EV flagship F-150 Lightning four times. It is astonishing that a major manufacturer should have such trouble setting prices for a major vehicle launch. (Here is every major automaker’s plan to go electric.)

Reuters says, “The base variant of Ford’s electric F-150 truck now starts at $59,974, excluding shipping and taxes, up nearly 50% from its starting price when launched last year.” Ford simply cannot get right the price of the components that go into its vehicles.

Ford also has shaken customers’ trust as it suspended production of the Lightning because of battery problems.

Ford launched the Lighting into an increasingly crowded field. Within less than two years, Chevy, Ram and Tesla will release electric sport utility vehicles. Each company has the manufacturing capacity, balance sheet and brand strength to challenge Ford.
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Ford recently admitted it has a quality problem, which it believes it can fix in two years. That is an eternity in the car business.

Ford also raised the price when an EV price war started. If anything, the companies in the race will bring down the manufacturer’s suggested retail price to get market share. Ford may have to drop the price of the Lightning after raising it. At least customers would get some benefit.
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This is the latest fumble by Ford’s mediocre (or less than mediocre) management. It miscalculated expenses in one quarter last year. Ford’s stock has plunged. This has to anger the Ford family, which essentially has control of the company.
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Investors and customers will only tolerate Ford’s problems for so long. The breach of trust with each will only widen.

If Ford wants to be in the first tier of EV companies, it has a very, very long way to go.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.