
How the failed deal with Waymo left Ford in the lurch - Fricken
http://www.autonews.com/article/20170529/OEM/170529795/google-ford-deal-mark-fields
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csours
Disclaimer: I work for a Ford competitor, but have no first-hand knowledge of
this deal.

I'm thinking about the concept of 'frenemies' and jumping to some unsupported
conclusions.

In tech you may have a turnaround of weeks or months for some products. In
automotive, you may plan a new vehicle for 5 years and then in some cases
produce it for up to 10 years after that, and then continue to support that
vehicle for 10 more years.

Also, automotive customers do not support the idea of moving quickly and
breaking things (excepting some Tesla customers).

This leads to relationships like 'frenemies' not making much sense in auto
manufacturing. If you can't trust the other party to be there for years, you
don't start a relationship.

Now the mostly baseless speculation: It seems that Mark Fields felt that Ford
brought a lot of value to a potential Ford-Google partnership. I assume Fields
though Google would understand and value that as well, and it seems that
Google did not value that, leading to misunderstanding and frustration.

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wavefunction
I don't know any serious business that embraces 'breaking things' when a bit
more effort and time ensures that nothing gets broken.

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ams6110
It goes along with CEOs who wear T-shirts to work.

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michaelvoz
What's the word for this kind of phrase? One where the author of the sentence
has some kind of skewed world view, and we get to see a glimpse of it?

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tyingq
Parapraxis, or Freudian slip maybe?

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rmason
What is revealing is that a former office furniture CEO from sleepy West
Michigan is apparently much more hip on Silicon Valley technology than the
whole of Ford.

This is how entire industries get disintermediated.

~~~
primrosepath
The auto companies everywhere except Tesla are so far behind.

Lived in Detroit most of my life. When discussed, the big 3's problems get
brushed away irrationally.

But it's worse than the future catching up with the auto companies. I feel
like the execs don't even know how to market to their customers.

Comparing Mary Barbra's unveiling of the Bolt to Elon's Model 3 was night and
day. Elon had a teleprompter but he spoke like a normal guy about things he
and I am interested in.

On the other hand Mary's speech was stiff and read word for word. They used
early 90's cutting edge graphics in the background at one point. They talked
about the history of GM which no one cares about. It felt like it was directed
at share holders not customers.

A lot of ideas about how to run a car company will change. I'm not sure the
big 3 will make it.

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Judgmentality
Well, the big 3 are all currently profitable, so they have that going for
them. I'm not sure how Tesla is going to make it as they continue to
overpromise, underdeliver, and hemorrhage money.

I do agree with you though that Tesla is far better at marketing.

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greglindahl
Tesla has had repeated success raising money by going to the financial
markets, so, it appears that enough fools are willing to invest to sustain
them until now and for a while longer.

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cinquemb
And the Big 3 have had big success in getting large near zero interest rate
loans and liens of liquidity provided by tax payers directly and the
issuance/sales of t-backs on behalf of tax payers. Financially speaking, the
shenanigans of Tesla and the Big 3 aren't too dissimilar…

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slededit
Ford didn't get a bailout, nor did they need the cash for clunkers assistance.

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Judgmentality
This isn't true. Ford actually took out a bigger loan than GM. In fact, Ford
still owes the government over $6 billion when the other automakers have
repaid their debts.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2011/09/19/ford-
loo...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2011/09/19/ford-looks-
hypocritical-in-new-anti-bailout-commercial/#5dbec21a1efc)

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dboreham
Reading this article my conclusion is that "autonomous self-driving vehicles
don't work at present". Ford management had the belief that they do work and
therefore wanted to press ahead with a go-to-market plan. Google management
knows they don't work and so back-pedaled. Deal fell apart as a result.

~~~
true_tuna
That conclusion is almost certainly incorrect. Internal communications at
Google indicate strong confidence in the approach and viability of the cars.
There was constant crowing about hundreds of thousands of miles driven
autonomously (with the only at fault accident being the car committing the
egregious sin of expecting an overtaking public bus to yield for an indicated
merge). A recurring internal criticism is that they have been ready to go to
market for a while, but are proceeding with extraordinarily caution. Google
probably wants a repeat of the Personal Computer market: open, agile,
competative. There's a hint of this in the way they structure deals (quietly
helpful, non-exclusive). "You want the technology? Sure. You want exclusivity?
Nope." If Uber had asked for a technical partnership instead of straight up
stealing the tech they'd probably have gotten what they stole and more with a
smile and a high five.

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pirocks
Interesting this website is "not secure". I remember that chrome was going to
start doing this, but the first time I actually saw it happen.

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dc_gregory
We had this issue on our sites for a short time; all in all, it was very
effective at forcing a much higher business priority for the fix.

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SA500
Hopeless on the part of Ford.

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dosgonlogs
This article makes Google look really bad.

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Eridrus
Does it? The article made it sound like Ford's main goal was to appease Wall
St, whereas Google was focused on actually building the damn thing.

~~~
true_tuna
That's my take on the situation too.

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skywhopper
"At the time, none of the major automakers had spelled out a serious plan for
getting fully self-driving cars on the road."

Even if it had worked out, a deal with Waymo would not have been a "serious
plan". This deal only amounted to throwing money at a hype factory in order to
gain credibility in an imaginary market. Waymo hasn't proven it's even on
track to create a workable product in the next decade. Google in particular
has a proven track record of having a very short attention span. They won't
make a good partner in the long run, no matter what. Carmakers like Ford would
be a lot better off playing the long game on this, focusing on building out
practical semi-automated safety features in the proven iterative manner they
know, and growing their own expertise in self-driving engineering in-house.

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SA500
Google have been doing this for longer than anyone else and have logged an
order of magnitude more miles (cf. all their competitors combined). They also
have by far and away the most accurate/reliable technology as evidenced by
their dis/engagement stats. They are years ahead of everyone else. As a
separate company they would be valued at ~$70 billion- with huge upside

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LoSboccacc
I don't see how people could be tricked to buy a google car with the
expectation of the controlling software being obsolete in a couple year and
left unupdated as the sensor technology improves.

That alone makes google a risky partner for any serious automaker - they're
better of as a partner to a leasing agency than a seller.

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true_tuna
Ha! You have a point there.

