Personnel News: Where Are They Now?
March 02, 2007

Former Ford Engineer Goes to Johnson Controls

Mary Ann Wright, who headed the team that launched the Ford Escape Hybrid, has joined auto supplier Johnson Controls as CEO of Johnson Controls-Saft Advanced Power Solutions LLC, a joint venture between Johnson Controls and French battery maker Saft Groupe SA.

Luring Wright to Johnson Controls, headquartered in Milwaukee but with major operations in Detroit, is a coup. She’s the real deal, according to everyone who worked with her inside Ford.

In her new job, Wright will be responsible for accelerating the growth and executing the launch of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle battery programs with emphasis on state-of-the-art technology, manufacturing and electronics integration, her new employer said in a statement. In addition to leading the joint venture, Wright will also have the role of vice president and general manager, Johnson Control's hybrid systems. 

Ford had put Wright in charge of the Escape (and Mercury Mariner) hybrid program when it was floundering in research and development. Her job was to put it into production. An engineer, Wright, listed among Automotive News' top 100 women in the auto industry, had helped launch the Mercury Village and Nissan Quest, produced in a Ford-Nissan joint venture, and the second-generation Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable.

For Ford's hybrids, she gathered a team of experienced pros who had launched numerous vehicles, and she combined them with a group of young, highly diverse research types –- many of them passionate environmentalists and vegetarians like Wright -- but who had never brought a vehicle to market. Some had never set foot in an assembly plant.

The result was Ford became the first domestic automaker to sell a hybrid vehicle and the industry’s first company to sell a hybrid SUV. Ford hybrids have been very successful, and Ford was hailed for its leadership.

After the SUV hybrid launches, Wright was promoted to director of a newly formed group called Sustainable Mobility Technologies and Vehicle Programs. She was responsible for all hybrid, fuel cell and alternative fuel technology development.

While she has remained mum about her departure from Ford and, in fact, has avoided interviews altogether, Wright reportedly left Ford because CEO Bill Ford was making grandiose declarations of Ford’s plans for alternative fuel projects but wasn’t backing those goals with appropriate levels of funding. She reportedly found her task impossible. Even competitors raised their eyebrows at Ford’s lofty goals for the number of hybrids by decade’s end, which couldn’t possibly be met with current production and technology capacity, primarily batteries, which come from Japan. Ford has since scaled back its plans.

For the past year, Wright has served as executive vice president of engineering, design and product development at financially troubled auto supplier, Collins & Aikman, now in liquidation.

Less than Six Degrees of Separation

Wright also left Ford after her boss and supporter, Phil Martens, departed Ford. Martens, previously at Mazda and then head of Ford’s North American product development, went to automotive supplier Plastech Engineered Products Inc. as CEO in suburban Detroit. Ford had passed Martens over for promotion to the top North American job. The President of the Americas post went to Mark Fields, previously a subordinate to Martens.

After only nine months as Plastech, Martens has left there as well, along with other top executives, after a failed attempt to acquire Collins & Aikman, its much larger competitor. Martens now is senior vice president at auto supplier ArvinMeritor Inc.

Meantime, General Motors in January award a contract to the Johnson Controls-Saft partnership that Wright now heads to create a usable lithium-ion battery that would go into a vehicle like the Chevrolet Volt, unveiled at the 2007 North American International Auto Show. The partnership is competing with Cobasys, a joint venture of a Chevrolet Corp. subsidiary and Troy, Mich.-based Energy Conversion Devices Inc. (headed by former GM president Robert Stempel), to create the battery.

Posted by Michelle Krebs at 6:06 AM under Ford , News , Personalities | Comments (0) | digg this | Seed Newsvine