Posts Tagged ‘Ford’
“The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.”*…
What’s true of threats is also true of opportunities. Could Ford’s new truck be the pivot to a new, greener personal transportation future?
As the top-selling model line in the U.S. for 40 years, Ford Motor Co.’s F-Series pickups hold special weight in the auto ecosystem. The lineup, led by the F-150, generates more than $40 billion in annual revenue. Only one other U.S. product—Apple Inc.’s iPhone—tops F-Series sales.
Given this, Ford’s decision to electrify the F-150 stands as one of the boldest strategic decisions in 21st century business. An electric F-150, more than any other vehicle, will persuade rural America to go green, leading the way for almost every automaker that finds itself challenged by the electric transition.
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Costs for Lightning owners will be considerably lower than for those owning the F-150. The $39,974 base price (factoring in federal subsidies) is 17% less than that of an entry-level F-150, according to Atlas Public Policy.
Operating costs are lower too…
The most highly anticipated EV is about to hit the U.S. market — and raise the stakes for automakers’ efforts to cut emissions: “How Ford’s Electric F-150 Pickup Truck Will Cut Carbon Pollution,” from @business.
* George Washington
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As we plug in, we might recall that it was on this date in 1924 that map and travel publisher Rand McNally published the first edition of Auto Chum, which went on to become the best-selling Rand McNally Road Atlas.
“Speculative bubbles do not end like a short story, novel, or play… In the real world, we never know when the story is over”*…
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages is a hugely-influential book by Carlota Perez that suggests a connection between technological development and financial bubbles. which can be seen in the emergence of long term technology trends. She explicates her model by tracking repeated surges of technological development over the past three centuries, from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Age.
Written almost 20 years ago, it contained an implicit projection of where we would be today…
For this first stab at determining just when and where we are, we’re looking at 2002’s Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, by Carlota Perez. One of the great economists of our time, Perez is a leading thinker on technology and socio-economic development. Her book outlines a four-phased financial cycle depicting the archetypical sequence of capital deployment and market traction for a major technological revolution. In this post, we’ll dig into Perez’s cycle and discuss where we sit today in 2021…
“Where Are We? Part 1: Bubbles, Bubbles, Toils, and Troubles“: Annika Lewis (@AnnikaSays) and David Phelps (@divine_economy) apply Perez’s principles in an attempt to figure out where we are and what our future might hold– the first in a series of attempts to break down economic theorists to try to figure out where exactly we are in a cycle.
* Robert Schiller
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As we reset our sextants, we might recall that it was on this date in 1927 that the 15 millionth– and final– Model T rolled off of the Ford assembly line… effectively marking the end of the beginning (the “transition phase”) of the cycle that Perez calls the “age of oil, automobiles, and mass production.”
“The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it”*…
From Ulysses S. Grant to Philando Castile— how the automobile fundamentally changed the relationship between the police and the citizenry: “A Brief History of the Traffic Stop (Or How the Car Created the Police State).”
* Dudley Moore
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As we stay in our lanes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1900 that the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was founded in Akron, Ohio (also home to arch-rival Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and another two mid-sized competitor tire places, General Tire and Rubber and BF Goodrich). The company’s founder, Harvey Firestone, parlayed his close friendship with Henry Ford into a role as prime tire supplier to the Ford Motor Company, starting in 1906 with tires for the Model T. In 1926, the company opened the Firestone Natural Rubber plantation in Harbel, Liberia. The largest plantation of it’s kind in the world, it operated until it was seized, in 1990, by Charles taylor and his NPFL forces. The company’s ventures in Liberia have been the subject of considerable scrutiny and criticism, including a 2005 Alien Tort Claims Act case brought in California by the International Labor Rights Fund and a 2014 investigative report by ProPublica entitled “Firestone and the Warlord,” and a PBS Frontline documentary by the same name.
The first Firestone store
A rose by any other name…
In the Fall of 1955, the Ford Motor Company had dedicated two plants to produce the new “E-car” that was to anchor its future… but hadn’t yet settle on the new auto’s name. Stumped, Ford called on one of America’s foremost poets, Marianne Moore to come up with “inspirational names.” Ms. Moore obliged, submitting a list that included: “Resilient Bullet,” “Ford Silver Sword,” “Mongoose Civique,” “Varsity Stroke,” “Pastelogram,” “Andante con Moto,” and “Utopian Turtletop.”
Ford settled on “Edsel.”
[TotH to Edsel Pages; faux ad via; Carl Van Vechten’s portrait of Moore via]
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As we ruminate on nomination, we might send speedy birthday greetings to Ferruccio Lamborghini; he was born on this date in 1916. After World War II, Lamborghini built a smal engineering and manufacturing empire, starting with tractors made from reconfigured surplus military vehicles, then air-conditioning and heating systems. As his wealth grew, he began to buy luxury sports cars, ultimately a Ferrari, the pinnacle of the day. But Lamborghini found his Ferrari (especially its clutch) wanting, so decided to start a rival sports car company, Automobili Lamborghini, in 1963. That same year he debuted its first car, the Lamborghini 350 GTV, a two-seater coupe with a V12 engine– and a killer clutch.
Pack up all your cares and woes…
If you were committed to a psychiatric institution, unsure if you’d ever return to the life you knew before, what would you take with you? That sobering question hovers like an apparition over each of the Willard Asylum suitcases. From the 1910s through the 1960s, many patients at the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane left suitcases behind when they passed away, with nobody to claim them. Upon the center’s closure in 1995, employees found hundreds of these time capsules stored in a locked attic. Working with the New York State Museum, former Willard staffers were able to preserve the hidden cache of luggage as part of the museum’s permanent collection.
Photographer Jon Crispin has long been drawn to the ghostly remains of abandoned psychiatric institutions. After learning of the Willard suitcases, Crispin sought the museum’s permission to document each case and its contents. In 2011, Crispin completed a successful Kickstarter campaign to help fund the first phase of the project, which he recently finished. Next spring, a selection of his photos will accompany the inaugural exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorium’s new location…
Read the whole remarkable story, “Abandoned Suitcases Reveal Private Lives of Insane Asylum Patients,” and see more of Crispin’s remarkable photos, at Collectors Weekly.
[TotH to Rudy Rucker]
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As we remember to “roll, not fold,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1959 that the Ford Motor Company announced that it would discontinue it’s Edsel line of cars. Introduced to great fanfare on September 4, 1957– “E Day”– total Edsel sales were only about 84,000– less than half the company’s projected break-even point.
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