These days, aluminum and the Ford F-150 are pretty synonymous. Since the big reveal a short while back, the automotive industry has been buzzing and Ford has been in the media non-stop answering questions and responding to comments about the topic.
At the recent 2014 Geneva Motor Show, Ford executives reflected on the past two months since the reveal, and Motor Trend has it covered:
Mark Fields, Chief Operating Officer: This Was Not A Risky Bet
“Well the first thing we learned is people really like it… not only the response at the show, but obviously in looking at the blogs, in looking at the comments. I think people love the design, because it’s very progressive.
They’re very curious around… tell me more… tell me more about the payload, towing, fuel economy, things of that nature. So it’s been a lot of learning around that, which is really helpful for us as we look at our go to market strategy. So we’re very pleased with the response we’ve had so far.
Jim Farley, Executive Vice President, Global Marketing, Sales, Service and Lincoln: About The Repair Training Program
“I think we learned a lot to be honest. There was a lot more questions about repairability, so we’ve suddenly had to take our service engineering team primetime with the media now.
“We are about halfway into signing up the number of dealers that we need for the repairability. You know about 20% of the repairs for full size trucks are done by dealers, about 80% are independent repair body shops. We signed up about 400 dealers now – I think it’s just shy of 500 dealers – and so we’re about halfway to our goal. And we’ll have that training done by the third quarter, and all the equipment installed, the rivet guns, the MIG welders, all the containment
For much more, including further responses from Fields and Farley, as well as input from Global Product Development Vice President Raj Nair, see the full article.