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Ford hurt by 2015 F-150 production restraints

The new 2015 Ford F-150 came out of the gate strong for January 2015 with all F-Series sales up 17 percent for the month. However, February tempered those gains a bit with the model line dipping 1.2 percent, and the Ford brand itself dropped 1.7 percent year-over-year. The fall is being blamed in part on tight supply of the latest pickup. A major factor holding back the 2015 F-150 is that they are only currently being made at the Dearborn Truck Plant. The Kansas City factory is still changing over, and full supply from them both is expected by the middle of the year. Ford also just announced plans to hire an extra 1,550 people to build the pickups, including 900 in Kansas City. However, the downtime in the assembly changeover has caused about 90,000 units in lost production since mid-2014, according to The Detroit Free Press. It's not all bad news for the pickup, though. The latest F-150 made up 21 percent of F-Series sales in February, according to The Detroit Free Press, up from 18 percent in the previous month, and they remained on dealer lots an average of 18 days. The lessened supply has also meant lower incentives. Mark LaNeve, Ford's US marketing boss, told the Free Press that average F-150 transaction prices were up $2,000 from last year. He also indicated that retail figures grew seven percent in February, while F-Series fleet numbers were down 18 percent. The constrained supply does come at an inopportune time for Ford, though. This year is expected to be huge for pickups. Also, lower gas prices appear to be pushing people towards SUVs and trucks recently. Related Video:

2015 Ford F-150 spied in the rain

Standing as quite a contrast from the spy shots of the 2015 Ford Mustang we saw earlier today, our spies also sent along these pictures of the next-generation F-150 pickup out testing in its (heavily camouflaged) full prototype body. Much of the new truck's design is hidden under the bulky coveralls, but we expect a lot of its new lines to be inspired by the Atlas concept that debuted at the 2013 Detroit Auto Show.
Perhaps the biggest unknown surrounding the new F-150 is what, exactly, its body will be made of. Earlier reports have suggested that lightweight aluminum materials may be used throughout, offering a serious reduction in weight versus previous models. But Ford engineers will need to be careful, though, as they need to keep a tight rein on costs while preserving class-competitive (if not class-leading) towing and payload capacity.
On the powertrain front, the new F-150 will undoubtedly carry on with EcoBoost engines, and we'd bet on a normally aspirated V8 as well. A diesel option hasn't been confirmed, but we wouldn't be surprised to see one some time in the truck's lifecycle. Mum's the word on when the production F-150 will be revealed, but our best guess is that we'll see it at the 2014 Detroit Auto Show.

Translogic 174: Ford envisions the future of parking

Translogic visits Georgia Tech for a glimpse at the future of parking. First, we demo the Ford remote parking program by driving a golf cart around campus from the comfort of an off-site lab; think of remote parking as a virtual valet. Then we see how Ford's "parking spotter" works, a crowd-sourced way of finding an open space. Along the way, Translogic host Jonathon Buckley chats with Ford's global director of vehicle electrification and infrastructure, who explains how these innovative parking concepts could help us get around more efficiently. Have an RSS feed? Click here to add Translogic. Follow Translogic on Twitter and Facebook. Click here to learn more about our host, Jonathon Buckley. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT Jonathon: You turn the wheel and the cart turns the wheel because we've got to remember that the carts 150 meters down that way. I should use yards because I'm not in Australia any more. Welcome to Translogic. I'm Jonathon Buckley. Every year in this country we spend over 70 million hours looking for parking. We think that's a pretty miserable way to spend that time but Ford Motor Company and Georgia Tech have taken this problem head on by developing a parking spotter experiment and some pretty cool remote driving functions to go with it. When it comes to remote vehicle repositioning, you guys have been so far using golf carts?Mike: That's right.Jonathon: What's the goal with this type of technology?Mike: As you probably know, car sharing is becoming one of the emerging trends in mobility. With that, any type of sharing program that we looked at around the world, one of the common challenges it has is that during the end of the day, or the nighttime hours, there's something that has to happen to get all the assets back to where they need to be for the next day. Cell phone technology and broadband technologies have advanced so far that we can remotely control a vehicle from anywhere it the world. For example, we could actually take this and create a virtual valet. You and your significant other pull up to, say, a restaurant. You could potentially get out of the vehicle and then the call center could take your vehicle and park it for you. You wouldn't need to do anything [00:02:00] else other than arrive at the restaurant.Jonathon: The whole thing's pretty intuitive. It works exactly as you imagine a golf cart would work. The only difference that there really is is there's just a little bit of latency that you have to account for.