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Ford will lay off 700 employees in Michigan

Lagging sales of compact and electric cars are starting to take their toll on automakers. Ford said Thursday it intends to lay off 700 employees who work at the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, MI, over the next five months. The plant makes Ford Focus and C-Max vehicles. Sales of both have stalled in recent months. The layoffs affect 675 hourly and 25 salaries employees, and will begin in late June and continue through September, according to paperwork filed with state officials. The company expects to re-hire the affected employees elsewhere and use them on temporary basis throughout the summer. Ford spokesperson Kristina Adamski said the affected employees will be "first in line" for other jobs at nearby plants, and UAW vice president Jimmy Settles said he expected all would be re-hired at other southeast Michigan factories by "early 2016." Although industry sales have remained high overall, the growth has come from SUVs and pickup trucks. Conversely, compact cars and alternate-powered vehicles like the C-Max have struggled to find customers amid cheap gasoline prices. Focus monthly sales fell 14.5 percent year over year in March, and C-Max monthly sales dropped 22.9 percent over the same period. It was less than three years ago that Ford hailed the Michigan Assembly Plant as a model for its future, one that would quickly adapt to market conditions through a more flexible assembly process. The plant was retrofitted at a cost of $550 million so that the same assembly line could install electric, plug-in hybrid or gasoline powertrains. Ford produces the Focus, Focus ST, Focus Electric, C-Max Hybrid and C-Max Energi here. At the time, company officials said the flexible line was a way to "not be trapped with dedicated one-trick-pony plants where you have under-capacity or over-capacity situations," said Jim Tetreault, Ford's vice president of North American manufacturing, in November 2012. But that's exactly where Ford finds itself as consumers have turned away from both compact and gas-sipping hybrids and electrics as gas prices have fallen to a national average of $2.49 per gallon, according to Thursday's AAA Fuel Gauge Report. One year ago, gas prices averaged $3.70 per gallon. In perhaps a melancholy twist, the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator that were phased out at Michigan Assembly by the retrofit are once again the types of vehicles that are sought after by consumers.

Ford nets $924M in first quarter

Where General Motors' first-quarter 2015 financials showed growth in many major metrics, Ford's newly released numbers had falling figures in most of the vital categories. The automaker's Q1 revenue shrank to $33.9 billion, down $2 billion, and net income fell to $924 million, a $65-million drop. However, pre-tax profits increased slightly to $1.4 billion, $24 million more than in the same period in 2014, and operating margin rose to 3.6 percent, up 0.2 percent. Despite the less-than-stellar numbers, the Blue Oval thinks 2015 should be positive for the company. "The first quarter was a good start to a year in which our results will grow progressively stronger as the new products we have been launching start to pay off," CEO Mark Fields said in the financial announcement. The automaker has 15 vehicles to launch globally this year, and only three of them are already out. By the end of 2015, Ford predicts pre-tax profits of between $8.5 billion and $9.5 billion. In terms of vehicle sales, Ford slipped by 21,000 to a total of 1.568 million worldwide in the first quarter. North American sales dropped to 678,000, which was 39,000 less than last year, and pre-tax profits fell to $1.34 billion, a $160-million fall. The company explained the reductions on this continent as linked to the launches of the latest F-150 and Edge. In other major markets, European wholesales grew to 376,000 vehicles, a 9,000-car boost from last year. Pre-tax results there increased by $9 million, but the area still showed an overall loss of $185 million. In the Asia Pacific region, Ford moved 16,000 more units than in Q1 2014 to reach 366,000. However, due in part to preparing for new vehicles, the company only made $103 million there, a $188-million drop. The automaker released all of these figures as part of a PDF, which you can download here. Related Video:

Ford files trademark application for 'Model E'

In early December, Ford filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for the name "Model E." Historically, Ford never produced a Model E, and while automakers are known to file for trademarks they never use, some have wondered if the application might be used for a concept car.
Based on other recent events, though, it could be a legal move. In 2000 Ford sued an online start-up called Model E over the similarity of that name to Ford's industry-shaping Model T, but the judge dismissed the case citing lack of proper grounds. In August 2013, Tesla applied for trademark registration for Model E, and at the time, Ford said it would review the application. Tesla actually made two applications for Model E, one for automobiles and structural parts therefore, the other for "providing maintenance and repair services for automobiles," and there are plenty of theories about what the name could be applied to.
The Published for Opposition date for Tesla's applications is December 31, 2013, after which anyone who thinks they'd be harmed by Tesla being granted the trademark gets 30 days to register their issues. This is just speculation, but Ford's application - which was filed for automobiles only - might be about protecting what it sees as unwelcome encroachment on the name Model T, protection it wasn't able to enforce before when the stakes were only online and much smaller.