Motoring News

Ford India To Stop Manufacturing

Ford
Image Source Auto123.com

Ford India

Ford  has become another big auto manufacture to pull out of India. India is dominated by smaller & cheaper Asian cars, Ford has struggled to make an impact. Ford decided to avoid further losses they are to shut down factories in India and stop their manufacturing over there. The estimated cost of this decision lies around the 2 billion dollars mark, that’s a big amount of money to lose. However with the new focus being electric vehicles, Ford decided to take the loss head on rather than allow the factories to be a constant source of draining finances.

India Cars
Image Source Auto.com

India Car Market

Ford only claims a 2% market share in India. This is far below what the manufacturers had hoped. Many big auto manufacturing factories were opened up in India by big named companies. There was speculation that India would become the third most lucrative car market following the China & the US. In reality this never happened, India still trails Japan & Europe in car sales, and considering the dominant cars are small & cheap Asian vehicles (namely Suzuki and Hyundais), Ford and it’s 2% market share did not stand a chance. Many wonder how this will reflect on Indias prime minister and his “Make India” campaign. The head of Fords Indian facility has this too say:

“Despite efforts, we have not been able to find a sustainable path forward to long-term profitability”

 

Ford Mach E
Image Source ITD

The Future Of Ford

After pulling out of India and Brazil, it clears that Ford is cutting out expenses and losses. Most would say it’s just good business practice , which it may be. However in the past many manufacturers would fight over having a larger global presence even if that meant turning a loss. Recently the new E.V. movement has forced the hand of many manufacturers. The truth is that these companies have to produce E.V.s to stay in business for the foreseeable future. As we talked about in previous articles, this is no cheap endeavour, so it makes sense for Ford to pool all of its resources into something that guarantees a chance of staying in Business.

The World Of EV

Many first world countries are pushing for electric vehicles and more sustainable solutions. But this leaves large portions of the world behind where the infrastructure does not support having charging stations dotted around. Some of these places don’t have a grid to support this either. These areas are still using combustion engines and do large amounts of transport with big diesel engines in trucks and boats. The problem lies that many of these places have huge populations and the budgets do not exist for the EV movement to take hold. This is problematic since the EV movement is only as viable as how many people can support it. With big parts of the world unaccounted for it is difficult to justify a large manufacturer like Ford pulling out of India. We need more large scale manufacturing around the globe so when these car makers make the jump to EV the countries they occupy will have a better chance to adopt the EV movement. Manufacturers on the other hand tend to move their plants to where they can operate cheaply and sell in large numbers. They are businesses after all. With this in mind it can become clear that certain car producers are only participating in the EV movement to sell products and not for concern of the environment. This calls into question their process of putting these cars together. Having an electric motor is one thing, but having a manufacturing process that is not “green” can be just as harmful as combustion engines.

 

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