MULALLY: THERE’S AN ELECTRO-FORD IN YOUR FUTURE

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“In 10 years, 12 years, you are going to see a major portion of our portfolio move to electric vehicles," Alan Mulally said at the recent Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference in Santa Barbara, California.

How should we react to that prediction?

Some PowerStroke® diesel owners who have thrown down $250.00 at their local Ford store for a pair of Motorcraft® batteries every four or five years are probably not tingling with excitement over Alan Mulally’s pandering to the greeniacs and global warming true believers and the prospect of future battery replacements costing ten times as much.

Perhaps some fans of Ford’s storied V8, Mustang, and “Total Performance” heritage may be wondering if the next Thunderbolt or Lightning will be some government-specification FWD electric golf cart instead of legendary pavement-ripping muscle.

A few futurists are imagining spaceship-like Electro-Matic Fords dominating the nearly-silent drag racing at the “Plasma Boy Nationals” in 2025.

And some probably wonder how they’re ever going to afford another new vehicle when government regulations have added $5,000.00 to $15,000.00 to the cost to pay for all of this electrification.

What is the reality?

Are Willie Wiredhand (tm) and Reddy Kilowatt (tm) really the go-to guys for the Ford Motor Company? Or is Mulally just shoveling another load of politically-correct, all-organic biomass?

1. Mulally’s comments demonstrate the obvious – that to meet the draconian Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards now on the books and expected from the mean green OBAMAites (regardless of whether California gets its CAA waiver from the E.P.A.), some electrification is inevitable.

2. Mulally’s prognostications mirror the hopes and dreams of the real boss: William Clay Ford, Jr. Bill Ford has always been “dual minded” with respect to Ford’s products. On the one hand, he apparently appreciates “throaty” Mustangs and profit-making trucks and SUVs. On the other, he apparently pines for adulation by the Sierra Clubbers and luddites who believe that we’re burning “the Planet” to a crisp with the “evil” internal combustion engine and personal automotive liberty. Thus, Mulally is Bill’s “boy” and he’s got to advance the Ford family line when appropriate.

3. Mulally’s opinions reflect an engineer’s sensibilities. For a vast majority of automotive uses, partial or full electrification would be efficient. Regenerative braking, start-stop shut-downs, and electric traction motor-assisted acceleration are elegant and intriguing engineering problems. The space-aged prospect of hydrogen fuel cells is enough to keep a creative engineer awake at nights.

4. Other than the expense, extra weight, complexity, and potential safety hazards, partial electrification of performance cars isn’t such a bad thing. It would allow them to survive in a hostile regulatory world.

A proper turbocharged V8 with a full-spread of torque-broadening technologies would be further enhanced by a torquey electric “booster” motor. Such a V8 could do most of the things a wimpy Prius could, and even run on four cylinders at steady-state cruise, but deliver enough off-boost fuel economy to placate the reasonable regulators and pragmatic greens (the hard core performance haters will never be satisfied as long as anyone is still having fun with “hot” cars).

Many of the parasitic systems on performance cars are begging to be electrified, which would permit more power-to-the-wheels. If and when Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) make a splash in Formula One racing, many technophiles and Walter Mittys will want similar systems for their sports cars and club racers -- just like they wanted turbos in the 1980s.

5. Electrification could save a thin remnant of traditional performance. If more pedestrian uses of light vehicles can be electrified, then their contributions to the CAFE average is increased. This could offset the production of a few more serious high-performance cars.

Certainly, this will eventually decrease the supplies of traditional junkyard-sourced hot rodding parts (much as the earlier switch to low-performance FWD and multi-valve fours and sixes already has) and will dramatically increase the acquisition costs of a surviving traditional muscle or sports car due to fewer mass production synergies. But the most likely alternative is worse – forcing everyone into soulless Fiat 500-sized microcars (or worse) and greatly limiting supplies of light trucks and sporting machines.

6.For all of the good wishes, hopes, dreams, and imagination of the legion of electric car advocates, electric cars are still a poor second to vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. In the vast heartland, a car with a 100-250 mile range between lengthy recharges is impractical. Huge breakthroughs must be accomplished before electric cars have the range and power density of a traditional gasoline/E-85/Diesel-powered vehicle. AND FULL HYBRIDS AND "TOTAL ELECTRICS" STILL AREN'T PROFITABLE TO BUILD IN MASS QUANTITIES. So Mulally’s comments ought to be taken in light of these practical realities. The internal combustion engine will be available in Ford showrooms in some form for the foreseeable future.

7. Mulally IS telling the appliance motorist greens what they want to hear. In these troubled times, Ford has to acknowledge the mostly erroneous popular narrative that the Detroit 3 alone caused the mess they’re in. And the way out of the mess is to “build cars that people want.”

If you’re a “true believer” in the Greenhouse Gas religion, then the “cars that people want” are really the cars greens think people ought to have, notwithstanding the reluctance of the masses to venerate egg-shaped electric hybrids, Smart® toll-booth cars, and the horrendously expensive and impractical GM EV-1.

The greens and the liberal freedom-hating bureaucrats are terrified of true free-market solutions because they know that a fairly large plurality, if not a majority, are not “true believers” and would snap up old school Detroit vehicles in huge numbers – if they were still built in reasonable numbers and at real market prices (Note that the prices for large vehicles have been artificially increased by the twin engines of regulatory compliance and supply constraints dictated by CAFE regulations. These factors have also artificially reduced the diversity of available models, designs and equipment).

It should also be noted that even a lot of bureaucrats inside of the Detroit 3 are scarred of the free market. If the fleet mix were truly market-based, it could affect profit margins on some of Detroit’s largest and most powerful vehicles. For example, there’s simply no technological reason why adding a couple of cylinders and some beef to the drive-line should cause the customer to pay a $10,000.00+ “penalty” over a mass-market six. And a supercharger or turbo which costs significantly less than $1,000.00 when purchased in bulk shouldn’t command a $5,000.00+ premium on the showroom floor if supplies and demand were not artificially limited. Yet some of these Detroit 3 bureaucrats who favor increased margins on fewer units see CAFE as a magic bullet to artificially decrease demand and increase opportunities for price gouging. Why would you want the hassle and risk to build 1,000 units to make a million in net profit if you could make the same amount of profit on 100 units?

Remember, the Detroit 3's management is packed with deadweight, appliance motorists who will never understand high performance vehicles, and boring bean counters who would be just as happy “costing out” any consumer product as they are working for an automaker. They do not hope to build legendary vehicles or help millions of automobile enthusiasts live their dreams. They build "widgets."

8. Mulally has to play the hand he’s been dealt. Even if he were an optimal combination of Zora Arkus-Duntov, Carroll Shelby, “Maximum” Bob Lutz, Enzo Ferrari, Ferdinand Porsche, Vince Piggens, and John Coletti, Mulally is still stuck with a company bleeding sales, virtually no youth market penetration, dwindling cash reserves, and a Katrina-sized hurricane of emission/fuel economy regulations bearing down upon him. So Mulally’s paean to the magic future virtues of electromagnetism is merely a recognition that the wide-open frontiers that faced Henry Ford, Henry Ford II, and even the hapless Lee Iacocca are not so open at the moment. If he’s to be credible, he’s got to talk a game that consistent with the funless, dower, depressed times in which his potential consumers and shareholders live.

Conclusion: Is there an Electro-Ford in your future?

Probably.

Does it mean the end of Ford’s “Total Performance,” Affordable-V8s-for-the-masses persona?

Hopefully not.

Does it mean the future is going to be a lot more complicated and expensive?

Most certainly.