Ford is in focus today. After the automaker hosted
a capital markets event for investors, the company outlined
plans to cut costs and eventually turn a profit in
its Nason electric vehicle business. Joining me now to
discuss how the company is going to get there is
Ford CFO John Lawler, John, thanks for joining
. So the last time, the last time we
spoke about three weeks ago, you told me about
continued cost cutting in Europe and new restructuring measures in
China. What's changed since then? Well, you
know, I don't think much has changed on that
front since then, but what's changed for us is
we just had our Capital Markets Day today and we've
talked about the investment thesis here at Ford and the
fact that we have three incredibly strong businesses within Ford
and the possibility and the potential growth of each of
those businesses. So a local media outlet, John
though in China called the Economic Daily News did report
that 1300 workers would lose their jobs in China as
the company tries to grow collectively around the world.
Is that number correct? I'm actually on the China
numbers and that what we're focused here today is to
talk about the Capital Markets Day, the investment thesis
for Ford Motor Company looking forward, of course,
there will be restructuring as part of any transformation and
we are restructuring in China. We've been consistent about
the need to do that. And you know,
I'm not familiar with the article that you talked about
so I can't comment on those numbers. Ok.
Well, let's talk about Ford's gas powered vehicle unit
called Ford Blue. I know the company today said
demand is outstripping capacity. How is Ford going to
respond to that demand? Well, one of the
things we are doing is we're expanding the capacity in
our Ford Blue business. We have great products.
We have Broncos, we have Mustangs, we have
F one series leading pickup truck in the industry and
we're expanding the capacity. We're going to grow our
capacity by about 160,000 units. And we believe that
that's going to bring more, better balance on supply
and demand. Let's talk about E I know your
company intends to produce two million electric vehicles a year
by 2026. How are you going to get there
? Well, we're investing right now in our blue
oval facilities down in Tennessee where we're going to build
our next generation pickup truck. We're building battery plants
at this point to provide us with the batteries that
we need for that. We've talked about transitioning our
Oakville assembly plant to battery electric vehicles here in the
foreseeable future. So we've got a great footprint in
process right now, building both battery plants and manufacturing
plant for electric vehicles. And we're producing right now
, we're producing Mackey and F 150 lightnings and we
just expanded capacity on each of those as well.
I know the fleet business, the commercial business as
some people might know it called Ford Pro did earn
$1.4 billion in the first quarter. What is the
pipeline for that segment look like John, as we
know businesses really across the board are trying to be
more efficient. Well, if you look at our
Ford Pro business, we're the leading leader in market
share in Europe as a name plate. And here
in the US, we've got great products on the
road today. Now, not only do we have
leading products from an ice standpoint internal combustion engine,
we just launched a new super duty because we're up
against the clock. So I appreciate you joining.
That's Ford CFO, John Lawler.