Production runs & line output guesstimates

[portlandg]

I have just been onto the ford.co.uk configurator web page and the estimated delivery date has been updated to 'spring 2021' for ALL of our versions. The previous date was early 2021 with the FE designated priority build. Spring is defined as March/April/May. So I suppose that answers my previous question on the thread. @ChasingCoral, its looks as if you were spot on with your original estimates for runs 1 and 2. From the latest delivery update it would seem that UK/EUR cars will not be produced until after Christmas. Why did I ever doubt your predictions?

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[Honhme]

Thanks for all of the info (and guesswork). I have delayed placing the order on my Select reservation so as not to get the car until end of Q1 2021 (to coincide with turning in my current leased EV).

 

[Ponypower50]

I had an early reservation, decided to cancelled it, reconsidered month later and went on web and just make an order. Someone stated that you move to the end of the line, I don't agree. I don't think Ford is going to wait till all early reservations come in and then start building. Once they start production everyone should have their order in. Just my opinion.

 

[mamejunkie]

I had an early reservation, decided to cancelled it, reconsidered month later and went on web and just make an order. Someone stated that you move to the end of the line, I don't agree. I don't think Ford is going to wait till all early reservations come in and then start building. Once they start production everyone should have their order in. Just my opinion.

Cancelling and reordering is like cancelling your plane reservation and decided to fly standby. When the plane is going to take off, if there are empty seats, you luck out and get a seat. But if its full, sorry buddy but wait for the next flight.

There is enough lead time for reservation holders to convert to actual orders that I think those "at the end of the line" will probably be left out for the initial few runs of production.

 

[dbsb3233]

I don't think Ford is going to wait till all early reservations come in and then start building. Once they start production everyone should have their order in. Just my opinion.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Production has been announced to start at a serious pace on Oct 26. Do you mean you think all orders from reservation holders will be submitted by then? While it's likely that MOST of those ordering will do so before 10/26, not ALL will. Some are planning to wait hoping to be able to do a test drive first (Nov/Dec). For Premium models, Ford is giving reservation holders until 12/31 to convert before losing their reservation.

 

[Honhme]

I beleive that the same is true for Select reservations - good to 12/31 to place an order.

 

[PSaulet]

My dealer is today with the France sales manager hoping to take away as much information as possible.
My neighbor, an automotive engineer, tells me that a chain operating in 3 x 8 hours is capable of removing 1,000 cars per day.
According to the organization of the factory, it turns out that production could quickly convert orders. It remains to know which of the factory that concerns us ....
? ? ?

 

[PSaulet]

The French reservation site is still talking about delivery of new reservations in early 2021.
Either the number of pre-orders is reduced, or the production rates can be increased

 

[portlandg]

My dealer is today with the France sales manager hoping to take away as much information as possible.
My neighbor, an automotive engineer, tells me that a chain operating in 3 x 8 hours is capable of removing 1,000 cars per day.
According to the organization of the factory, it turns out that production could quickly convert orders. It remains to know which of the factory that concerns us ....
? ? ?

Although it would be good for all concerned I very much doubt that the factory will be at that rate of production. Given that Ford stated right at the beginning that 50000 was to be the first years production at the rate you state it will take 10 weeks ( 5 day week) to do 1st years run. Unlikely. A more realistic figure is 1000 per week. We don't know what the working practices will be, how many shifts, number of workers etc. Once we this side of the pond get to confirm orders, get a build date we should get a rough idea of delivery dates.

 

[portlandg]

The French reservation site is still talking about delivery of new reservations in early 2021.
Either the number of pre-orders is reduced, or the production rates can be increased

UK reservation site says spring 2021

 

[MattG]

Although it would be good for all concerned I very much doubt that the factory will be at that rate of production. Given that Ford stated right at the beginning that 50000 was to be the first years production at the rate you state it will take 10 weeks ( 5 day week) to do 1st years run. Unlikely. A more realistic figure is 1000 per week. We don't know what the working practices will be, how many shifts, number of workers etc. Once we this side of the pond get to confirm orders, get a build date we should get a rough idea of delivery dates.

Agreed. Plus, we have to expect Covid-19 to cause unexpected disruptions to production, shutting down the factory for periods of time for cleaning and testing of workers.

 

[ChasingCoral]

With some recent information, it's time for version 2 of my estimates. First off, some important changes from my initial estimates (https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/production-runs-line-output-guesstimates.1033/)

1) My apologies to our friends north of the border. Having no information of separation of Canada from US in order and production systems, what I previously referred to as US we'll just call North America now.

2) Based on orders entered as of today (7-27) at https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/submitted-orders-tracking-list-enter-yours.924/
I now see we are at

3) For now I'll stick close to my original assumptions of NA orders at 5% FE, 50% Premium, 15% Select, 5% CA Route 1, 25% GT. It doesn't represent the percentages in the table above but we know all the FE orders have to be in this week and I strongly suspect most of the eager non-FE buyers are getting Premium. However, I think the strength of the Premiums may be a little higher than my first estimate.

4) I'm sad to say that I don't think there will be any more opportunity for First Editions as there seems to be no option for dealers ordering them for FCTP (see #4).

5) I'm also sad to say that my theory they will produce FCTP (dealer demo) units before Job #1 has been squashed. So has the theory that dealers will get production cars for FCTP in September (pre-production special events are still possible). Each EV-certified dealer, of which there are ~2000, will only get to order a maximum of one Mach E (see attached from a little birdie not in Mexico), although there may be some supplements. Clearly they are being produced after Job #1 (currently scheduled for October 26) and it looks like the First Editions may literally be the first off the line.

So that moves the dealer units into the same production as the customer units but drops the number down. My guess on these? 400 CA Route 1, 100 Select, 1500 Premium. Why? Why not show off the best of what they have to choose from. A few will want Selects because their market supports that, CA Route 1 will be popular in the south and west and dealers may recognize they are unusual. Most will want Premiums.

6) I have no reason to adjust the European estimates:
In EU/UK let's assume 7% FE, 33% AWD, 60% RWD. I really have no idea how many dealer demo units are planned for EU/UK as I don't know how many dealers you have. However, I'm guessing it is far fewer than in NA. Let's say 1000?

7) GTs
I was corrected that there are no EU/UK GTs and reminded by @eager2own that Ford said reservations were 30%.

8) So let's go with: NA orders at 5% FE, 50% Premium, 10% Select, 5% CA Route 1, 30% GT.

So,
Total units:
20,000 NA: 1,000 FEs, 10,000 Premium, 2,000 Select, 1,000 CA Route 1, 6,000 GTs,
30,000 EU: 2,000 FW, 18,000 RWD, 10,000 AWD
Plus NA FCTP units and EU/UK demos (Is it called FCTP over there?).

9) One item I learned from my source in Cuautitlan is the stamping facility and the assembly line share workers. We also know they should start stamping in August, preparing parts for assembly. They are also starting running 2 shifts, not 3. With Job #1 scheduled for October 26, that could mean lots of parts. They probably want to test all of their gear early, so that means stamping, painting, etc. for both NA and EU/UK parts up front. That means there is a Run 0 that is producing parts before Job #1 / Run 1 of assembly.

If they pre-make lots of parts, then run the assembly line hard before the Christmas-Three Kings Day break, they could be running faster than the original estimate. They might then train more folks to add the 3rd shift later or increase simultaneous stamping and assembly. We also know the plant is capable of much more than 1,000 units/week.

We increase production in the early production period to 2,000 units/week on average, assuming pre-stamping of much of the parts before the start but having to do stamping and assembly at the same time after the first of the year, so slowing to a bit over 1,000 units/week.

Working with these numbers:
EU/UK runs focus on getting a full Roll-on Roll-off ship: ~8000

Run 1 focuses on getting out as many US cars as possible but adds one RORO load to head to EU/UK.
26 October-23 December 8 weeks 16,000 Mach Es

8,000 to US that are 1,000 FEs, 6,000 Premiums, 600 Selects, and 400 CA Route 1s.
Of those, 1500 Premiums, 100 Selects, and 400 CA Route 1s go to dealers as demos.
These start arriving late November and continue deliveries into early January.

8,000 to EU/UK that are 2,000 FEs, 4,000 RWD, and 2,000 AWD.
Of those, 400 RWD and 600 AWD going to dealers as demos.
These arrive in the middle of the first quarter of 2021.

Run 2 focuses on getting out one more RORO of EU/UK cars and the rest of the non-GTs to the US
11 January-2 April 12 weeks 14,000 Mach Es

Run 3 gets out two more ROROs of EU/UK cars and the GTs to the US
19 April-30 July 15 weeks 20,000 Mach Es

That models out to:

I will admit that's an optimistic early assembly schedule but that was also based on my source in Cuautitlan thinking 1,000 per week seemed awfully low.

Thoughts?

 

[dbsb3233]

Thoughts?

Sounds like reasonable guesstimates to me.

So that FCTP memo is new. Leaked from a dealer in the last few days, I presume? That kinda changes/clarifies things. But it makes sense, as even just getting 1 demo to most dealers is still a tall order in this COVID-delayed/compressed model year launch for the MME. 2 would have been surprising.

This actually gives me a bit more hope of getting mine earlier, if there's not 4000 demos all coming ahead of customer units.

 

[macchiaz-o]

We also know they should start stamping in August, preparing parts for assembly. They are also starting running 2 shifts, not 3. With Job #1 scheduled for October 26, that could mean lots of parts. They probably want to test all of their gear early, so that means stamping, painting, etc. for both NA and EU/UK parts up front. That means there is a Run 0 that is producing parts before Job #1 / Run 1 of assembly.

Thanks for all the details and your reasoned prognostications. Regarding this bit that I quoted above, though... Doesn't it seem wrong to stamp sheets of metal for 16,000 (or however many) vehicles months before assembling any of them? That's a lot to store. And they risk them rusting and so on.

Rust protection isn't applied until after the body is assembled, just before the body is painted. But I don't think they'd store 16,000 bodies awaiting further assembly.

So my guess is that, if the October 26 date for Job 1 is accurate, then stamping en masse begins October 26. A small queue of body parts could be queued up to feed them binfuls at a time to the robots to begin assembling, riveting, and welding. From there, I'd expect the bodies get QA checked by humans, some smaller/finer details handled and/or repaired by humans, and then immediately from there to the priming and painting.

I've watched a lot of the auto factory videos out on YouTube at this point. Most of them seem to be the same... From a high level point of view, it seems most likely that building this car will be very much like building any other car these days. All sorts of parts or built-up components (dashboards, battery packs, motors, wire harnesses, wheels, etc) will arrive into the factory on a continuous basis, getting where they need to be just before they're needed and no sooner, in most cases.

 

[PSaulet]

For information, there are 38 Ford VE dealers in France.
I do not know what FCTP is, my dealer told me to have to order his own two demonstration vehicles (2 dealerships in his name) by the same diagram as us online ....

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