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How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

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Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#61

Post by Lvl999Noob »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #52
CalRobert wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks. It’s protectionism all the way down I guess. Though I see tons of US pickup trucks in the Netherlands, and have seen even lifted ones in Germany too for that matter.

Lamenting the difficulty of registering kei trucks is kind of rich coming from the patron saint of "the roads are horribly dangerous and we need to do everything to safen them up and drivers can bear whatever that costs" Protectionism when I don't like it, public safety when I do I guess. In any case, they're pretty easy to register if you don't lick the boot. Whatever state you're in typically isn't gonna come after…

> if you catch my drift

Not OP but I don't. What do you mean? How do you make the kei truck an object they aren't in the business of taxing when they are, in fact, in that very business? Or maybe I have some deeper confusion about the issue here.

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#62

Post by Theodores »

cbg0 wrote: post #21
GreenSalem wrote: post #10

[flagged]

China, being a superpower, has a vested interest in bringing other superpowers down a peg as well as increasing other countries' dependence on China. Their state has a serious incentive to ship out cheap cars to destroy the automotive industry in the US and the EU for example. When that happens they can double the price on all their vehicles and you can't restart your car factories to compete with them again until ye…

Such a weird take, it sounds as if you have never read or listened to anything that the Chinese leadership have had to tell the world. Or for that matter, Confucius. Yet there is certainty of a paranoid mindset, with some 'yellow peril' going on. Hearst did well with that one!

Just read their five year plans. Not the 'yellow peril' fearmongering, just go to source and make your own mind up. The Chinaman is not out to get you. In fact, until recently, he looked up to you and had the open hand of friendship. He made you many beautiful things and you didn't say thank you, you wittered on about 'stolen IP' (from your stolen land, and it wasn't even your IP, not personally).

China is in no urgency to supply their fine electric cars to the 5% that consider themselves to be American. Why would you? The most litigious place going, with the cheap gas, sinophobia, tariffs and special dealership rules. There is no 'rug pull' either, you are on the 'rug pull' now, with US/EU vehicles costing a fortune. Chinese cars offer savvy consumers a way off, to the sensible land of great value cars.

What you are failing to understand is that, internally, China is hyper competitive, with no rent-seeking class and no settled in mono-duo-trio-polies to stifle all innovation, as per the West. What emerges from the brutal competition of the free market in China (free from rent seeking monopolists) is super-good when it makes it to the wider world.

Huawei kit was just too good, plus the backdoors for five eyes weren't in it, so it had to go. Do you honestly think they had 'communist' backdoors to key infrastructure they were selling into the West, to be scrutinised by armies of security engineers? They are not stupid.

As for the costs being higher in the West, that is just rent seeking, not workers getting paid more, just having more rent/mortgage to pay due to the class of rent seekers the West upholds as 'smart' when they are just parasites, in a financialised economy that is broken.

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#63

Post by pjc50 »

cbg0 wrote: post #54
pjc50 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For vehicles in the $20-$100k price range? That feels too trivial to make a difference, is it correct or just a number chatgpt invented?

I think it's based on a few sources + page 6 from here https://www.oliverwyman.com/content/dam/oliver-wyman/v2/publ...

Still: if the number is that small a fraction of the overall cost, it barely matters which country it's made in? That's basically the cost of selecting a non-standard paint colour option, by the time you look at final price?

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#64

Post by adithyassekhar »

pjc50 wrote: post #43
cbg0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China, being a superpower, has a vested interest in bringing other superpowers down a peg as well as increasing other countries' dependence on China. Their state has a serious incentive to ship out cheap cars to destroy the automotive industry in the US and the EU for example. When that happens they can double the price on all their vehicles and you can't restart your car factories to compete with them again until ye…

Something I've been trying to articulate for a while is that the EV revolution is a smaller version of the phone and internet revolutions: it requires a bunch of infrastructure buildout, but it's also the result of individual consumer choices. And it's highly synergistic. But along with that, it will create "losers", existing companies whose business can't adapt to the new ways. Sears had a hundred-year start on Amaz…

> They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire.

“Those damn pesky artists still painting by hand. We need to wait for them to die out to let the stable diffusion guys take over and then we will be number one!”

I know what I said. Engines are an art.

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#65

Post by pjc50 »

adithyassekhar wrote: post #64
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've been trying to articulate for a while is that the EV revolution is a smaller version of the phone and internet revolutions: it requires a bunch of infrastructure buildout, but it's also the result of individual consumer choices. And it's highly synergistic. But along with that, it will create "losers", existing companies whose business can't adapt to the new ways. Sears had a hundred-year start on Amaz…

> They attach too much prestige and career to being "petrolheads", or simply working in the engine division; after all, that's the most expensive to develop and least easy to substitute part of the car. The EV transition threatens to sweep that all away. Probably most of the EU manufacturers won't really get on board until those people retire. “Those damn pesky artists still painting by hand. We need to wait for them…

> “Those damn pesky artists still painting by hand.

Long ago hand painters used cadmium yellow. It may be art, but it's also poisonous. Same for Napoleon and his arsenic wallpaper. In the end, same for CO2-emitting engines.

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#66

Post by pjc50 »

kalleboo wrote: post #57
cbg0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China, being a superpower, has a vested interest in bringing other superpowers down a peg as well as increasing other countries' dependence on China. Their state has a serious incentive to ship out cheap cars to destroy the automotive industry in the US and the EU for example. When that happens they can double the price on all their vehicles and you can't restart your car factories to compete with them again until ye…

This is somewhere where sensible tariffs actually do make sense. Set the tariffs to offset any government subsidies or environmental regulatory costs. If the cars are actually better, let people buy them, make domestic manufacturers compete. Just don't allow dumping. Complete protectionism doesn't work because it makes your own manufacturers non-competitive on the global stage.

> Set the tariffs to offset any government subsidies or environmental regulatory costs.

The problem is this is really hard to objectively measure.

> Complete protectionism doesn't work because it makes your own manufacturers non-competitive on the global stage.

Yes - and this is a problem Detroit has been struggling with since Japan got decent at cars. The recent wave of protectionism is backing them into the dead end.

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#67

Post by cheschire »

gyulai wrote: post #60
cheschire wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you can see how a kastenwagen nutzfahrzeug is a very different vehicle from a consumer mid-size pickup, right? Sure, technically some would call the vehicle you linked a pickup, and technically German law still identifies the consumer pickup truck as a nutzfahrzeug instead of a PKW, but it doesn’t feel like you’re making a best effort to meet GP in the middle.

The distinction gets at something interesting though, and it's a weird intermingling of culture and politics. I think a truck as owned by a consumer, and as an American would understand the word, is, at least in part, a lifestyle statement derived from maybe overprovisioning on the horsepower. Such a lifestyle statement in Germany seems to be perfectly socially acceptable when it ties in with luxury and doing your "c…

In my experience the resistance seems to come from the sense of “waste” that comes from buying a specialized vehicle. Anecdotally the folks I talk to (all blue-collar “commoners”) are overly focused on buying the eierlegende Wollmilchsau[0] vehicle. They view specialized vehicles, especially luxury-priced specialized vehicles, as an unnecessary waste.

Does this relate with your experience? It sounds like your perspective is broader than mine and more informed.

Edit: oof two downvotes for trying to have a conversation and expand my understanding of a culture. Vielen dank.

0: definition for the English speakers: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eierlegende_Wollmilchsau

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#68

Post by throwaway2037 »

CalRobert wrote: post #49
gyulai wrote: post #40

I live in Germany and am sure as hell that I will never be driving a $30k electric pickup here. They'll make sure nothing like this ever becomes legal to import or drive on German roads until after there's a German car brand on it, and it costs 10x that while being identical, just to subsidize lots of local jobs that are low-wage, high-tax, and taking away manpower from other sectors/fields where it's more needed.

That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks. It’s protectionism all the way down I guess. Though I see tons of US pickup trucks in the Netherlands, and have seen even lifted ones in Germany too for that matter.

    > American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks.
It is crazy when I hear people say they want to drive a kei truck on American roads. American SUVs and trucks are enormous in both height and weight. The kei truck does not offer the necessary crash protection.

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#69

Post by JumpCrisscross »

CalRobert wrote: post #49
gyulai wrote: post #40

I live in Germany and am sure as hell that I will never be driving a $30k electric pickup here. They'll make sure nothing like this ever becomes legal to import or drive on German roads until after there's a German car brand on it, and it costs 10x that while being identical, just to subsidize lots of local jobs that are low-wage, high-tax, and taking away manpower from other sectors/fields where it's more needed.

That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers who want Japanese kei trucks. It’s protectionism all the way down I guess. Though I see tons of US pickup trucks in the Netherlands, and have seen even lifted ones in Germany too for that matter.

> That sounds similar to the lamentations of American buyers

Is there a good international metric for how much a given country’s car buyers pay extra due to tariffs, duties, protectionist regulation, et cetera?

Re: How do you design a $30k electric pickup? Inside Ford's skunkworks

#70

Post by pjc50 »

Theodores wrote: post #62
cbg0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China, being a superpower, has a vested interest in bringing other superpowers down a peg as well as increasing other countries' dependence on China. Their state has a serious incentive to ship out cheap cars to destroy the automotive industry in the US and the EU for example. When that happens they can double the price on all their vehicles and you can't restart your car factories to compete with them again until ye…

Such a weird take, it sounds as if you have never read or listened to anything that the Chinese leadership have had to tell the world. Or for that matter, Confucius. Yet there is certainty of a paranoid mindset, with some 'yellow peril' going on. Hearst did well with that one! Just read their five year plans. Not the 'yellow peril' fearmongering, just go to source and make your own mind up. The Chinaman is not out to…

> Do you honestly think they had 'communist' backdoors to key infrastructure they were selling into the West, to be scrutinised by armies of security engineers? They are not stupid.

The UK used to have a special BT+Huawei+MI6 joint office where the kit was subject to inspection. I never heard of anything confirmed coming out of there, and the thing seems to have vanished from the internet. So I suspect the order to phase out Huawei was similarly politically motivated.

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