Ford CEO: Ford to focus on 5 key areas of innovation: mobility, autonomy, connectivity, customer experience and performance

19 December 2014

In a pre-Christmas media event, Ford president and CEO Mark Fields said while 2014 was a good year for the company, 2015 has the potential to be a “breakthrough year”. Fields said that Ford’s investments in products, people, plants and technology, combined with industry growth, are not only delivering a year of growth in terms of revenue, pricing power, operating margins and profitability in 2014, but are setting the stage for growth in and beyond 2015.

The global automotive industry is staged to experience $1 trillion of revenue growth over the next five years, Field said: from about $2 trillion today to about $3 trillion by the end of the decade. “That’s a tremendous amount of growth. We want to get our fair share of that growth.” In moving forward on that, Fields said, Ford will focus on five key areas of innovation: mobility, autonomy, connectivity, customer experience and performance.

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If you think about mobility, that’s what we’ve been doing since Henry Ford started the company. It was all about opening the highways to all of mankind … and we are going to continue to do that, both in the physical world, and the digital world.

Our vision for connectivity, it’s all about helping people stay connected. We are going to help enable that with our next generation sync system. Autonomy. Today we have the broadest portfolio of driver assisted features. We are going to build on that those provide the building blocks for full autonomy down the road. Our approach for that is to make it available for all, and not just for a chosen few.

Customer experience. Our vision for the customer experience is that every time someone touches Ford Motor Company … a smile comes on their face. We want to make it easy for the customer to interact with our company. We want to be known as the trusted steward of the customer data.

Performance. Our company was based on performance. The winnings that Henry Ford won from that race back in 1901, he used those funds to start Ford. We are transforming our approach to performance. We will continue to bring to market those products that people really crave .

[In 1901, Henry Ford won the Sweepstakes Race against Alexander Winton, then America’s greatest racer. The upset win also gained the entrepreneur backing for starting Ford Motor.]

Ford has made a number of recent announcements reflecting the focus on those areas. The evolution of mobility has long been a hot button for Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford, who urges that Ford think of itself as a mobility company rather than just an auto company. (Earlier post.)

In conjunction with the media event, Ford announced that it, Magna International Inc. and Verizon Telematics, were supporting the launch of “Techstars Mobility, driven by Detroit”—a startup business accelerator program sited in downtown Detroit. Together, the companies are committing $2 million in funding plus mentors and other resources to support participating startups. (Earlier post.)

The tech incubator is aiming to deliver innovative mobility and transportation solutions that help alleviate growing global challenges such as traffic congestion, parking availability and pollution. The mobility scope is “broader than automotive,” noted Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford. “The space really can comprise a lot of different [types] of companies.”

On the connectivity side, Ford launched the third generation Sync 3 system. (Earlier post.)

Ford Performance. Ford also announced that it will introduced more than 12 new performance vehicles through 2020, including an all-new Focus RS, to be available globally. Ford is also uniting regional performance engineering and racing teams as one global team under “Ford Performance”, delivering more new vehicles and parts, more quickly.

Ford remains committed to innovation through performance. Our new global Ford Performance team ties together racing, performance vehicles and parts. It will allow us to more quickly introduce products and accessories that meet the needs of customers around the world on-road and on the track.

Focus RS, which builds on a pedigree of driving excellence dating to the first Ford RS in 1968, was last introduced in 2009. Focus RS will join Ford’s existing performance lineup, including Fiesta ST, Focus ST, Shelby GT350 Mustang and F-150 Raptor.

In addition to pleasing enthusiasts, these vehicles help deliver the company’s One Ford plan for profitable growth, product excellence and innovation in every part of its business. Performance vehicle sales are growing around the world—sales are up 70% in the United States and 14% in Europe since 2009.

In the United States, more than 65% of ST customers come from outside the Ford brand, and more than 50% of Ford performance vehicle owners’ next vehicle purchase is a Ford. Millennials are purchasing ST vehicles at a rate twice that of other Ford-branded vehicles.

Powering performance vehicles such as Fiesta ST and Focus ST is Ford’s EcoBoost engine range. Since the introduction of the EcoBoost engine in 2009, Ford has produced more than 2 million EcoBoost engines globally.

The new Ford Performance organization unifies Ford SVT, Team RS and Ford Racing globally, serving as an innovation laboratory and test bed to create unique performance vehicles, parts, accessories and experiences for customers.

This includes developing innovations and technologies in aerodynamics, light-weighting, electronics, powertrain performance and fuel efficiency that can be applied more broadly to Ford’s product portfolio.

In addition to using racetracks around the world, the team will develop new vehicles and technologies at Ford’s engineering centers globally and at the new technical center in Charlotte, North Carolina. This facility will help the team deliver racing innovations, as well as advance tools for use in performance vehicles and daily drivers alike.

The Ford Performance organization is led by Dave Pericak, who has been appointed director, Global Ford Performance.

Data analytics. Ford has also appointed data science and analytics expert Paul Ballew as executive director and chief data and analytics officer, further building its team of experts to help better understand consumer behavior and help speed development of mobility, connectivity and autonomous driving innovations.

Ballew most recently was global chief data, insights and analytics officer at Dun and Bradstreet. Previously, he spent 20 years in business and the auto industry in various senior executive positions researching and analyzing consumer behavior, including at the Federal Reserve, J.D. Power and General Motors. While at Nationwide Insurance, Ballew built the first analytics organization in financial services, transforming the way the company interacted with customers across the entire organization.

Ford is accelerating its investment and research into data science and analytics as the foundation of its focus on innovation. The goal is to better anticipate customers’ wants and needs as Ford implements its Blueprint for Mobility and its One Ford plan for profitable growth.

In the new role, Ballew will lead the company’s data and analytic efforts globally, establishing an enterprise-wide vision for analytics and integrating all of Ford’s research, analytics, processes, standards, tools and partner engagement. He will report to Bob Shanks, executive vice president and chief financial officer. The appointment is effective 5 Jan 2015.

Ford already has an award-winning analytics team. Last year, Ford was awarded the prestigious INFORMS Prize from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences for using data science and predictive analytics to improve overall operations and performance.

Ford uses analytics widely, including in its research, product development, manufacturing, supply chain, marketing and sales, finance, purchasing, information technology and human resources functions.

PBL/JRC: Global CO2 emissions increase to new all-time record in 2013, but growth is slowing down

18 December 2014

Global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel use and cement production reached a new all-time high in 2013, according to the annual report “Trends in global CO2 emissions”, released by PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Joint Research Centre (JRC). This was mainly due to the continuing steady increase in energy use in emerging economies over the past ten years. However, emissions increased at a notably slower rate (2%) than on average in the last ten years (3.8% per year since 2003, excluding the credit crunch years).

This slowdown, which began in 2012, signals a further decoupling of global emissions and economic growth, which reflects mainly the lower emissions growth rate of China. China, the USA and the EU remain the top-3 emitters of CO₂, accounting for respectively 29%, 15% and 11% of the world’s total. After years of a steady decline, the CO₂ emissions of the United States grew by 2.5% in 2013, whereas in the EU emissions continued to decrease, by 1.4% in 2013.

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The report is based on recent results from the joint JRC/PBL Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), the latest statistics on energy use and various other activities.

In 2013, global CO₂ emissions grew to the new record of 35.3 billion tonnes (Gt). Sharp risers include Brazil (+ 6.2%), India (+ 4.4%), China (+ 4.2%) and Indonesia (+2.3%).

The much lower emissions increase in China of 4.2% in 2013 and 3.4% in 2012 was primarily due to a decline in electricity and fuel demand from the basic materials industry, and aided by an increase in renewable energy and by energy efficiency improvements.

The emissions increase in the United States in 2013 (+2.5%) was mainly due to a shift in power production from gas back to coal together with an increase in gas consumption due to a higher demand for space heating.

With the present annual growth rate, China has returned to the lower annual growth rates that it experienced before its economic growth started to accelerate in 2003, when its annual CO₂ emissions increased on average by 12% per year, excluding the credit crunch years. In 2013, the Chinese per capita CO₂ level of 7.4 tonnes CO₂/cap just exceeded the mean EU28 level of 7.3 tonnes CO₂/cap, which is 50% above the global average. It is still less than half than those of the United States of 16.6 tonnes CO₂/cap, which has one of the highest per capita emissions.

In terms of CO₂ emissions per 1000 US$ of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), China is declining, yet still scoring high with 650 kg CO₂ per 1000 US$ of GDP. In comparison, China’s emissions per 1000 US$ of GDP are almost twice those of the US (330 kg CO₂/1000 US$) and almost three times those of the EU (220 kg CO₂/1000 US$).

This is due to a relatively high, although steadily declining, energy intensity of the sectors contributing to GDP growth. China started to take new measures to improve energy efficiency and to make a fuel shift away from coal, including coal consumption targets, an increase in hydropower and structural changes.

Transport. The consumption of oil products increased by 1.7% in 2013, of which three-thirds was used in the transport sector and the remainder mainly by refineries and the manufacturing and building industries in almost equal shares.

According to national statistics, in 2013 total oil consumption in transport increased somewhat by 0.5%, relative to 2012 levels. This is in contrast to most preceding years since 2007, in which annual oil consumption decreased by 2.2% on average, mainly due to the increased energy efficiency of vehicles over time.

Biofuel use for transport increased by 7.3% in 2013, increasing its share in transport fuels by 0.3 percentage points to 4.7%. Global biofuel production has been growing steadily from 16 billion liters in 2000; 100 billion liters in 2011; and 113 billion liters in 2013.

Current fuel ethanol and biodiesel use represents about 3% of global road transport fuels and could be expected to have reduced CO₂ emissions with a similar percentage if all biofuel had been produced sustainably. In practice, however, net reduction in total emissions in the biofuel production and consumption chain is between 35% and 80%. These estimates also exclude indirect emissions, such as those from additional deforestation. … Thus, the effective reduction will be between 1% and 2%, excluding possible indirect effects. Large uncertainty in terms of GHG emission reductions compared to the fossil fuels is driven by both the complexity of the biofuel pathways and the diversity of the feedstock, nevertheless, in the near future the advanced biofuels (lignocellulosic, algae) are expected to deliver more environmental benefits.

Resources

• Trends in global CO₂ emissions: 2014 report

Teijin opens second production line for LIELSORT separators for Li-ion batteries

18 December 2014

Teijin Limited is opening the second production line for LIELSORT, an innovative separator for lithium-ion secondary batteries (LIBs) to meet the increasing market demands. (Earlier post.) Operations will begin on 24 December.

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Teijin produces two types of LIELSORT separators. One is a polyethylene-based material coated with the highly heat-resistant meta-aramid Teijinconex; the other is coated with a highly electrode-adhesive, oxidation-resistant fluorine-based compound. Teijin Lielsort Korea Co., Ltd produces both types, which are sold by Teijin Electronics Korea Co., Ltd, a wholly owned sales company for LIELSORT separators.

The new production line will double the LIELSORT production capacity to respond to the expanding demand for coated separators. LIELSORT is used widely in globally bestselling smartphones and tablets. The line will also accelerate the development of a new type of LIELSORT that Teijin is currently working on to achieve both higher heat resistance and adhesion for improved LIB safety.

Teijin utilized its expertise in polymeric chemistry to develop the first technology for simultaneously coating both sides of LIELSORT. It also developed a high-speed coating technology that is five times faster than conventional coating. Both technologies enable more efficient production.

Teijin, which is working to establish LIELSORT as the de facto standard for next-generation LIB specifications, targets LIELSORT sales revenue of ¥2 billion (US$16.9 million) by 2020.