Why Ford's three-row electric 'personal bullet train' SUV went off the rails
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At a packed investor day in Dearborn, Michigan, last year, Ford Motor F.N executives lauded their forthcoming three-row electric SUV, which they said would be rolling off assembly lines in 2025.
At a packed investor day in Dearborn, Michigan, last year, Ford Motor F.N executives lauded their forthcoming three-row electric SUV, which they said would be rolling off assembly lines in 2025.
"We call it a personal bullet train. It's beautiful and it's unlike anything in the segment so far," Doug Field, Ford's head of EVs, and a former executive at Apple AAPL.O and Tesla TSLA.O, said at the May 2023 event.
Fifteen months later, the personal bullet train was officially derailed on Wednesday as the U.S. automaker killed it before it even launched, a sign of the industry's deepening retrenchment on EVs as consumers have been slower than anticipated to jump on board battery-powered technology.
"The reality is that the market changed," Marin Gjaja, Ford's chief operating officer for its EV division, told Reuters on Thursday. "As we saw the growth and adoption rate fade, we were furiously trying to catch up."
Ford executives said they would instead focus on hybrid three-row SUVs, one of the most prominent EV product pivots to date - and one that could cost the company up to US$1.9 billion.
Removing a significant vehicle from Ford's EV future, one that executives had promised would differentiate the company in a crowded field, also means leaders will have to refresh their pitch to investors about how they will turn around the automaker's slumping stock.
"You've been in that box with all of us and it's now time to break out," Ford CEO Jim Farley told investors during the May 2023 event, referring to the company's stock valuation, after touting the three-row SUV. Ford shares have fallen 25 per cent from their July peak this year, and are down about 5 per cent from the 2023 investor day.
