Ford’s Pathetic Excuse

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Feb 28, 1:18PM EST · Published Feb 28, 12:03PM EST

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Ford’s Pathetic Excuse — © Amazon 22 (CC BY-SA 2.0) by CIAT

It’s this simple. The headline of an in-depth investigation from Bloomberg, the leading financial news organization in the world, read, “Ford’s Electric Pickup Is Built From Metal That’s Damaging the Amazon.” The article is thousands of words long and is supported by detailed graphs and photography. It would be hard to find a story more damaging to the reputation of a major American manufacturer. (Click here for the good, the bad and the ugly of owning a Ford F-150.)
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Ford’s response to the Bloomberg investigation was sent to 24/7 Wall St. after we queried about the Bloomberg article. It read, “Ford is committed to a supply chain that exceeds minimum regulatory compliance requirements and respects human rights, including the right to clean air and clean water. That commitment applies to everything we make and that others make for us. We encourage people to call attention to issues, investigate all of them, and work with suppliers to align their business practices with our standards.”
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The response is pathetic and reflects poorly on Ford’s management and the Ford family, led by Executive Chair William Clay Ford Jr., the company’s de-factor CEO.
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Ford has fumbled the launch of the Ford F-150 Lightning, which is its most likely path to success in the electric vehicle (EV) market. Ford sells over 600,000 units of the gasoline-powered F-150, a huge installed base for any newly launched vehicle. Ford has unexpectedly raised the Lightning’s price to a level that makes it unaffordable for some pickup owners. It also has shut down the Lightning assembly line because of battery defects.
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Bill Ford has said the Lightning is the most important product launch of his tenure. The problems of the launch should be humiliating.

The Bloomberg story is a symptom of Ford’s problems and not the core of them. The core is Ford’s management, led by Bill Ford.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.