Ford Waits as GM, Toyota Take Lead on Plug-In Hybrids
By Scott Doggett June 27, 2008
Ford Motor Co., under pressure to trim its reliance on trucks, said it's moving more slowly than other automakers on plug-in hybrid vehicles so that rivals assume the risk of marketing the new technology.
"If customers aren't buying them, we're not making them,'' Ted Miller, Ford's senior manager of energy storage, said in an interview with Bloomberg Thursday.
"If there's going to be a true plug-in hybrid market, we're going to be there. It's just that that's a huge commitment to actually go to production.''
That tack may force the world's third-largest automaker to play catch-up if plug-ins such as General Motors Corp.'s Chevrolet Volt concept can be built in high volume. The chief hurdle is a rechargeable battery for extended electric-only use.
GM and Toyota Motor Corp., the world's two biggest automakers, are racing to introduce a vehicle able to recharge from household electrical sockets in 2010. Ford has a test fleet of 20 Escape hybrid plug-ins, without a target date for selling them. "It seems a good strategy because it's cheap, they don't have to take this risk,'' Mike Omotoso, a powertrain analyst at market-research firm J.D. Power & Associates in Troy, Michigan, told Bloomberg. "If Ford sees in a few years that the plug-ins are a commercial success, they can adopt the existing technology.''
Ford, which has lost $15.3 billion due to weak sales in just the past two years, views the plug-in as a "Hail Mary" effort, Miller said, using the sports metaphor for a desperation play. Operating a plug-in vehicle may be difficult for motorists in big cities, Miller said.
Manufacturers "assume you have access to a plug, and that's simply not the case in many cities where people park on the street or just don't have a garage,'' he said.
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