
Ford Was Unprepared for Investor Revolt and C.E.O. Change - JumpCrisscross
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/business/dealbook/ford-was-unprepared-for-investor-revolt-and-ceo-change.html?emc=edit_dk_20170523&nl=dealbook&nlid=65508833&ref=dealbook&te=1&referer=
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0xCMP
From my reading, they still have the dual share class right? It just gave them
an understanding that many people did not like how it was being managed?

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dforrestwilson1
Correct

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slededit
Ford's main problem is playing it too safe. They are making gobs of money
doing it, but it's hard to see the future. I don't know if they'll have a
place in an electrified world, nor how well their self driving vehicle
division is doing.

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DanCarvajal
Wait why wouldn't Ford (or really any automaker) be able to make electrics
cars?

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justaguyonline
With the level of outsourcing and specialization that has gone on, most car
manufacturers are evidently not really car manufacturers anymore, but actually
internal combustion engine manufacturers and assembly line operators. They
just pay other companies to make most of the parts for them and keep the
engine in house as their "secret sauce", as a technology that can't easily be
copied.

Likewise, Tesla isn't really an electric car company or even an electric motor
company. Electric motors are something everyone's known how to make for a
hundred years and they actually get a lot of their generic car bits like their
interiors from the same companies who supply traditional car companies.
Tesla's actually a battery pack company (this is why the PowerPack and the
SolarCity merger makes sense). It's the knowledge and the experience that went
into those packs that keeps other companies from easily copying Tesla.

The problem Ford and any traditional automaker faces is somehow pivoting from
their current secret sauce, which took them decades and billions of dollars to
develop, to a new one in a field that's completely unrelated, where almost
nothing they already know applies.

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mandeepj
> Electric motors are something everyone's known how to make for a hundred
> years

We are not talking about toy motors. Before Tesla who knew about making a car
motor which can reach 0-60 in 2.27 seconds?

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mikeash
Hobbyists have been putting down crazy 0-60 times for years. For example,
here's an electric Mustang conversion with a 0-60 time under 2 seconds:

[https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2015/06/17/electric-mustang-
re...](https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2015/06/17/electric-mustang-
records-1-94-second-0-60-time-builder-sets-200-mph-goal/comment-page-1/)

Here's a Datsun 1200 with a 1.8 second 0-60:

[https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/worlds-fastest-electric-
car...](https://www.geek.com/geek-cetera/worlds-fastest-electric-car-
is-a-1972-datsun-can-do-0-60-in-1-8-seconds-1416865/)

That one was built _twenty-three years ago!_

Tesla's achievement isn't the 0-60 time itself, but rather doing so in a car
that 1) is a practical daily driver family car 2) will withstand a couple
hundred thousand miles of driving without replacing major components 3) is
safe and robust enough to put into the hands of thousands of ordinary
consumers and 4) can be manufactured for a cost that is not entirely
ludicrous.

Which is impressive, but unrelated to the motor. In fact, the rear motor in
the P100D is the same as the one in my 85 and essentially the same as the one
that was in the original 2012 Model S, and the front motor is just a smaller,
less powerful version.

The main innovations which enabled this are related to the battery pack, not
the motors. Most of _that_ innovation is cutting costs. It's really easy to
get a _lot_ of power out of a large battery pack, and Tesla's cheap batteries
means they can put large ones in their cars without completely blowing the
cost up. They just about maxed this out with the P85D, which did 0-60 in
around 3 seconds. At that point they started to be limited by the amount of
current that the battery's fuses could handle. They got past that problem by
using a "smart" pyrotechnic fuse instead of the traditional melty-metal kind,
resulting in "ludicrous mode" on the P85D and P90D. Then the P100D bumps it up
a bit more just by virtue of having a larger battery.

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jacquesm
> will withstand a couple hundred thousand miles of driving without replacing
> major components

How many Teslas out there with > 100K miles and how many with > 200K miles?

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mikeash
Not many, since it's a pretty new car, but more than zero. For example:
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/tales-from-a-tesla-
model-s...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/29/tales-from-a-tesla-model-s-
at-200k-miles/)

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csours
> Shareholders didn’t just call out Mr. Fields. Some 35 percent of them also
> voted to abandon the dual-class share structure that gives the descendants
> of Henry Ford two-fifths of the vote with less than 2 percent of the stock.
> Stripping out the family’s votes meant that at least 58.5 percent of
> investors favored moving to one share, one vote — an act of open rebellion.

Holy Crap!

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stupidhn
> _Holy Crap!_

It'll happen to all these dual-class shares when the tide turns and the tech
sector falls from favour.

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kcorbitt
I think Ford's case is substantially different than that of Google and
Facebook though, because in the tech companies' cases if the shares are ever
transferred from the original founders they automatically lose their super-
voting rights. The theory is that the founders were smart enough to build the
juggernauts in the first place, and as long as they're alive they're
(hopefully) the best people to keep them going. With the Ford situation, the
current super-voting members of the Ford household "earned" that right by
wisely choosing the right parents. :)

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gozur88
This. Super-voting rights makes some sense for startups and for companies like
Times Mirror, where you don't want people buying up shares so they can dictate
the news. Less so for other companies.

On the other hand, while it's been close, Ford is the only US automaker that
hasn't taken a trip through bankruptcy court.

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wand3r
Yeah, Carlos Slim has 0 say in what the times reports. /S

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tehwebguy
Your account is new so I'll just tell you: sarcastic replies are almost always
obliterated here.

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wand3r
I think that's a pretty condescending way to make you're point. I've seen
plenty of successful sarcastic posts over the years. I made my point and
regardless of the direction of the votes, people saw it.

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tehwebguy
I think you misread my tone! Just noticed a < 1 year old account and filled
you in, nothing more. Everyone else was just down voting, which I didn't think
was helpful if you didn't yet know.

