Tesla has sold more plug-ins than Ford

They need Mulally back, bad. Fields seems to be entirely as "business as usual" kind of guy.

Ford sells plug-ins?

AnOutsider said:

Imagine if Tesla had gotten 5 billion and change.

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Yep. All the anger over Tesla and their 465 million dollar loan being paid back 9 years early. Ford is never mentioned.

TexasEV said:

Ford sells plug-ins?

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They have a Focus EV, and C-Max and Fusion PHEVs. They only advertise them in ZEV states, so most of the country (like where I live, in WA) is not aware of their offerings. A year or two ago I got a large, slick pamphlet from Ford advertising what good MPG their range got. They managed to talk about their ecoboost and hybrid cars without mentioning their EVs and PHEVs - amazing.

The bad news, in addition to the lack of advertising, is that they did very cheap conversions (stuffing all the batteries in the trunk) of existing cars, so they are not exceptional PEVs. Still, they are based on some decent cars (aside from C-Max reliability); they are reasonable compared to the competition.

The good news is that Ford is offering 3 PEVs, and they are technically available in all 50 states, if you somehow manage to hear about them and find a dealer that is willing to sell you one (that has been a real problem in my area). And it sounds like they are working on a better ~200-mile next-gen vehicle; they are remaining tight-lipped about it, which is a good sign that they are doing really shooting for sales and don't want to osborne their current line.

(In general auto companies serious about sales are tight-lipped about major improvements; when they broadcast major improvements way in advance, like GM is doing, it is more about brand-building because they don't care about current sales. Tesla is an unusual exception of course, as they obviously care about current sales but are trying to prod the competition. Nissan has mentioned their future cars, but largely in investor presentations when specifically asked about future EV competitiveness; their public consumer messaging channels have been very quiet about future range increases).

jvonbokel said:

In fairness, I think you could make a case that Ford's loan may have been as much about stabilizing them overall (ala GM bailout) as it was about funding EV production, but I don't expect anybody to make that counter-argument.

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I don't doubt that's true, but it's not what the loan was represented to cover.

I read somewhere that the C-Max breaks if you look at it wrong.