Goodbye Mach e

[WestwardCA1]

Any idea why that is? Are they smarter than us?

TLDR: In short, the Japanese manufacturers prioritize quality. US manufacturers do not. Ford says it does but the numbers do not support this.

Toyota is very conservative when it comes to releasing new technologies. Until this year the Sequoia had been the same car since 2007! You can't help but perfect something with that much time.

Long story:
Not smarter. There is no us vs. them. The auto industry is truly global. They source parts from all around the world. Made in the USA does not exist anymore. Assembled in the USA with parts from 20 countries does. They pull employees from the same pools of resources. Look at this list of ford manufacturing facilities, the majority of them are outside the US. Each has design centers located around the world. Toyota has a major headquarters, manufacturing and design centers in California, Texas and across the south. I live near Tesla. Of the employees that live in my neighborhood, many of the designers are from the UK or Australia (in my neighborhood - don't know about the whole company.)

That said, the headquarters sets the strategy / priorities, operational approach and culture.

So IMHO, I think it comes down to three things.

- Corporate culture and Inertia: It is really hard to change big organizations. What got you to where you were is not necessarily what will keep you there. Unions add to making it hard to change. People that join that organization learn the company culture - what to prioritize? how and why we do things.

This is heavily influenced by the.....

- Country culture of leadership: Germany values high / new technology. You see it in their cities, their movies, and their products. Reliability, not so much outside of the advertising, look at the NHST report Mercedes is right up there with the big three in recalls. BMW too. Japan is about precision, dedication, and quality. Trains run on time. Products are generally higher quality. People really take pride in what they do, and work insane hours. USA - Our organizations are driven by profit and managing the bottom line. The focus tends to be shorter term.

- The American Consumer: We are swayed by a good story. We want the latest tech! We are easily influenced by marketing and patriotism. On the outside, It has to have the right image, it has to fit the story - Ford Tough! Our cars tell our fellow citizens who we are and how successful we are. The average auto payment is $700 per month, yet the median income is $33k! People don't realize but they are delaying their retirement by constantly buying new cars!

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[Southern92]

I kinda wonder why people are still replying to this thread??

 

[StillWaitingForMachE]

Greetings

other than powertrain malfunction problems, and numerous software glitches that I cannot resolve, the car has been great. And to those of you who complain about bloviating or that this is my single post, more power to you. Good luck with your dealing with your defective cars and with dealing with Ford in the future

Except, according to your first post, you don't have power train malfunction problems. Just the fear of them happening. For some cars it neve happens. And for others, it happens, then you get the new beefy part, and then you don't have to worry anymore!

 

[RickMachE]

Time to hit "ignore" on this thread...

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

I kinda wonder why people are still replying to this thread??

Because no one can find a “beating a dead troll” meme, thus we’re compelled to continue responding.

 

[KevinS]

In a just universe, the OP has "watch this thread" and "receive email notifications" turned on and can't figure out how to disable it.

 

[generaltso]

I kinda wonder why people are still replying to this thread??

I‘m not. Oh wait……………………..dammit.

 

[mburtsvt]

Are you listening, Ford? You know you have a problem.



Why should I care? Because as a stockholder, ridiculous warranty expenditures are money out of my pocket. Ford stock is doing well despite these costs, but all Ford lovers should be concerned for a company that spends more on warranty repairs than all their peers do. More than GM? WTF!

Are you listening, Ford?

Hold on...Warranty cost are built into the COG, (cost of goods) formula for the car. They show up on balance sheets as assets, not liability's. Buy anything and a percent of the price goes into a "warranty" bucket that is used to pay out warranty repairs over time. Generally around 1-4% of the MSRP goes into that bucket.

 

[All Hat No Cattle]

I don't get it. We gang up on the guy that thinks that the Ford product that he owns is not reliable enough for him, when it is plain as day that Ford has a quality and reliability problem.

And I am not pulling this opinion out of my butt, it is common knowledge, if you read the neutral automotive and financial news. And CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, agrees with me.

Ford CEO Jim Farley Says Quality Issues Required New Talent
By Brett Foote

May 20, 2022 10:43 am

Ford has faced a number of quality issues in recent years, a fact that CEO Jim Farley was well aware of when he took over the top position at the company in October 2020. From the start, Farley noted that Ford needed to focus on improving quality and lowering warranty costs as the brand has long faced some problems in that area highlighted by Consumer Reports surveys that saw it fail to recommend the 2020 Ford Escape, give the 2022 Ford Mustang a low predicted reliability score, and recommend that consumers avoid the 2022 Ford Explorer. Now, after making quality a key component of Ford’s reorganization plan and hiring former J.D. Power Vice President Josh Halliburton as the new executive director of quality, Jim Farley recently noted that the automaker realized it needed to bring in new talent to tackle these ongoing quality issues.
“Aside from the financial performance, the pain for our customers is really something, we have to get to a zero-defect destination,” Farley said while speaking at Ford’s annual shareholders meeting. “We’ve made more progress on our launch quality and initial quality, you could see it in the surveys and our ramp-up of production. However, we are not satisfied at all with our quality “Aside from the financial performance, the pain for our customers is really something, we have to get to a zero-defect destination,” Farley said while speaking at Ford’s annual shareholders meeting. “We’ve made more progress on our launch quality and initial quality, you could see it in the surveys and our ramp-up of production. However, we are not satisfied at all with our quality, including our recalls and customer satisfaction efforts, which we need to quickly accelerate.

And saying that quality and reliability are not a big deal is not the way to get it improved.

I'm hoping that Ford is closely monitoring all the Ford forums and making corrections. I am sick and tired of reading that Ford spends more on warranty repairs per vehicle than General Motors!

But for Ford investors, action to shrink the U.S. automaker’s outlays for vehicle defects is overdue. Ford’s warranty costs for the first nine months of 2020 were more than $2 billion higher than those of GM.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

I don't get it. We gang up on the guy that thinks that the Ford product that he owns is not reliable enough for him, when it is plain as day that Ford has a quality and reliability problem.

Let's take the OP's post at face value, just for argument's sake. We would have here then an owner who does not trust his mach-e to not brick due to the well-documented HVBJB issue. This means that they have done at least some basic research. We know from his post that they are aware of the recall PowerUp OTA. Their comment was, "The software update plainly does not adequately resolve this issue." That is an opinion which they are certainly entitled to take. "I cannot take the chance of having my car brick." Brick has a meaning, none of the definitions include "I don't like the proposed solution." The PowerUp update ensures that the vehicle can continue to operate while awaiting the actual fix. They're aware of the PowerUp. They know what it does, they simply don't like it (fair enough). But the car won't brick for the HVBJB issue once the recall is complied with unless we're going to start throwing in spurious and every possible "What if?" scenario. The recall update resolves the immediate concern --cars bricking-- due to the HVBJB welding machine. It does not immediately address the underlying cause. But the car won't brick absent something else going wrong.

The OP, it seems, is either unsuited for motor vehicle ownership in general (not one car is incapable of being unreliable) or they're trolling. Most on here believe the latter. They've made exactly two posts. Both on this thread. If they're not a troll, they've sold the car. It'll find a new owner and that person will in all likelihood be happy with it. The OP? There was no way from the start to address or explain any of their concerns -- their mind was made up and they were going to tell us all regardless of our experiences or opinions. It's not the first time on this forum, nor will it be the last. But it is probably a Troll sighting.

In the meantime, this thread added nothing to the HVBJB issue discussions. It did provide a bit of a diversion to the forum though. And probably honed everyone's search skills for new "beating a dead horse" memes.

 

[ctenidae]

I kinda wonder why people are still replying to this thread??

Slow news day

 

[BilLongua]

good luck!
I'm in the same boat as you, but I decided to keep one GT and try Ioniq 5. trying to see if I need to move to Fisker Ocean or Tesla MY eventually.

wait, what?

 

[IgorKl]

wait, what?

?

 

[BilLongua]

Well I’ll reply since I’m bored. I love my Mach E. I’ve had no real issues, just some PAAK stuff, but that’s new tech. The car has been reliable, fun, and well made. I’ve owned a bunch of Fords over the years, and this one is the best by far, with just over 7,500 miles on it. I’ll admit, the forum has made it more stressful. If I never was on here, I probably wouldn’t have even thought about this issue prior to the recall. And this is my first EV, which is a big learning curve. Regardless, I’m not going to live in fear of breaking down. If it happens, it happens. C’est la vie. But not everyone is cut out for this stuff yet.

 

[Alan UK]

I approve this approach, provided some of the speculation you described is actually going to happen. Right now the official Ford FAQ describes the software update as the fix, and says absolutely nothing about replacing hardware in the 48,924 affected vehicles.

This conversation would be a lot different if they told us: "we're racing to outfit our dealers with equipment and training to replace the HVJBJ on all affected cars during the next 6 months, but rest assured that the software update will help limit the impact in the meantime"

I'm taking mine in tomorrow to have the physical fix. If it breaks down this evening the software fix will mean I can still take it in tomorrow. All seems a big non-issue from where I'm sitting. Oh and I've done 20,000 so far without a serious problem. Where did I put that wood?

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