How Ford burned $12B in Brazil (2021)

(reuters.com)

62 points | by kaycebasques 1 day ago

9 comments

  • locao 19 hours ago
    This article is wrong at its core.

    > The study was commissioned by Brazilian auto industry group Anfavea

    Nothing that comes from Anfavea is trustable. It's a crooked association of a few automakers that will try to push the government to give every subside to them and tax the other ones to the brim.

    The article tries to justify Ford Mexican cars low sales numbers in Brazil using every flawed argument Anfavea uses. For instance:

    > On Thursday, Ford launched its new Bronco Sport SUV in Brazil. Made in Mexico, it is exported to the U.S. where it starts at $26,820. In Brazil, where per capita income is much lower, Ford said the Mexican-made car will retail for $48,000.

    The key point here is "starts". Ford only imports top of the line cars in Brazil. I just searched Bronco Sport prices in Mexico in 2021, they started at $30900 up to $40000+. That $40000+ version was (still is) the only one sold in Brazil. 20% over the retail price in Mexico is not great, but far away from what the article tries to imply.

  • projektfu 18 hours ago
    Stellantis is doing well in Brazil, especially with the popular Fiat Strada. The Jeeps (Compass and Commander) are also seen as aspirational cars there for many people.

    I imagine the Bronco was selling way above the Commander price point with less features.

    But the real story now is that Chinese makers (BYD, Chery) are expanding rapidly. BYD is selling people on both electric and gasoline cars. Chery has a partnership with CAOA to produce cars in Brazil. Stellantis also builds cars in Brazil. It seems that the best way to sell to the market is to build there, and keep the costs down while hitting the right price point.

  • SPascareli13 21 hours ago
    Interesting aside, BYD (Chinese EV automaker) has took over production in the old Ford factory in Camaçari.
    • kaycebasques 19 hours ago
      Yes that is their biggest manufacturing hub right? And was the location of the working conditions controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Brazil_working_conditions_...
    • roysting 19 hours ago
      I was just reading an article on how BYD's flash charger can apparently charge a battery from 10-70% in 5 min and full in 9 min. That's basically refueling speeds.
      • hvb2 16 hours ago
        The only use for that is for people that cannot charge at home I would think. After having driven for 4 to 5 hours a 15 minute break is not an issue?

        If you can charge while you sleep, you would typically have enough capacity to make it through a normal day?

        Yes, there are probably exceptions but if you're not a commercial driver and drive >250 miles a day, that sucks....

        • roysting 11 hours ago
          I don’t know exactly, and I’m not an EV driver, but considering how many cars I see at supercharger stations, it seems to have a use case.

          I’m guessing it’s an American thing too though, we can drive many more hours and no one is driving straight 4, let alone 5 hours going 75+ mph in an EV because no one is going to run their battery down to zero. On top of that Americans really don’t like taking long breaks on road trips because that only extends the trip that in a fuel vehicle can, well, could commonly be 6-20 hours driving in the past.

          All the winning we are doing over here is quickly changing the mobility of American though. But that’s a whole different and interesting topic because it has major implications for America’s survival as a single entity that people overlook. America has held together to a large extent precisely because Americans could afford being mobile during the American century, i.e., the glue that kept the country together and made it feel like it belonged to us, an actual nation. That glue is breaking down for many reasons, one being expensive, impractical mobility.

          • hvb2 8 hours ago
            Some Tesla owners still have free supercharging so they'll be there because it's free "fuel".

            For your road trip example let's say we take a 1000 mile trip. With an EV that can be done in 6 legs (sandbagging it), maybe even 5 or 4 now. So that's 5 stops, over 16 or so hours of driving. If you average charge takes 30 minutes (sandbagging it) instead of 10, that adds 1 hour and 40 minutes or about 15% of total time. And this is pretty much worst case.

            I would think that's perfectly acceptable, but that's just an opinion. It'll give you time to go to the bathroom, stretch your legs, have a bite etcetera. If you're going to be peeing in a bottle and eating while driving, yes you can do it in less time.

            I would strongly suggest, the next time you do one of those trips. Time how long you actually spend at a stop, it might not be far off the 15 minute mark on average

        • rjsw 16 hours ago
          It would be helpful for the current generation of smaller electic vehicles that are fine for daily use but would need to stop every 100 miles on a longer trip in winter.
          • hvb2 8 hours ago
            I have driven a leaf since 2016 and I can tell you that no one will do this with 100 miles between stops. Because the stops aren't at exact intervals, you might be stopping every 80 to 90 miles since you don't want to risk not getting to the next.

            At that rate, you're adding time really quickly as charging might take 8 minutes but getting to and from the charger easily adds another 4 to 8 minutes. At that point you're talking about adding about 10 to 16% to your total time taken

            • rjsw 5 hours ago
              The listed range of the car that I'm thinking of [0] is 186 miles, I was using 100 miles as the useful range in winter as there are reports that it drops by a lot in the cold, this vehicle gets the largest subsidy in the UK right now. I had been considering this as my next car even before the subsidy was announced but slightly more range would be nice.

              [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Transit_Courier#Tourneo_C...

          • whatevaa 13 hours ago
            Smaller battery, slower max charging. Higher speeds are achieveed by parallelization.
        • glenngillen 15 hours ago
          Just got home from visiting family a couple of hours away in the highlands here. Battery is now at 40%, it'll take almost 2 days of charging at home to get it back to 100%. Hopefully I don't have another significant open highway drive to make in the next day or so.

          Also our electricity rates fluctuate based on the underlying wholesale rate. It's going to be clear and sunny tomorrow at midday. Sure would be nice to be able to set my car to charge at midday when the price is single digits cents per kw, or maybe even negative. Instead I'll just have to drip it in with the higher rates at midnight-6am and know tomorrows cheap rates will average out to a much lower cost.

          TLDR: definitely useful even for people who charge at home.

          • hvb2 8 hours ago
            I have been driving electric for 10 years now...

            You talk about rates, but if you care about that, this is a no brainer. You can go to that super charger and charge in 10 minutes. You'll just pay triple your home rate though? So if you care about cost, you would never charge anywhere else.

            Also, you say you need 2 days of charging to recoup 40 to 50% of battery (assuming you don't typically charge to 100 which you shouldn't). This implies you charge from a normal outlet. That's fine and I've been doing that for years, but if charge time was an issue you could have a level 2 charger at home and cut that time in 4 or something with not that big of an expense.

          • mdhen 12 hours ago
            The byd fast recharging requires a very high voltage, it's not something that will be available for home use
        • kakacik 14 hours ago
          Man, people have wildly different lifestyles than what you presume, also some of us live in colder climates where official battery numbers become a joke. Those numbers would be unacceptable for me and my family for example, annoying and disrupting every single weekend. Suffice to say we own 2 ICE cars and no electric car is coming anytime soon, the overall costs and inconvenience are simply too high.
          • hvb2 8 hours ago
            > Man, people have wildly different lifestyles than what you presume

            Likewise? If you're in the cold part of the US I can totally see your comment. But just saying, there's not that many people living there. Density wise thats really sparse. Most people live in much better climates, Europe has 1.5x the number of people of all the US and no climate that is remotely the same.

            If it doesn't work for you because you're in a remote area that does get really cold, I can totally see that. But I do think that makes you the exception, not the rule. For the US, California has been setting the rules for cars for years, because that's where a lot of the customers are whether you like it or not

        • dyauspitr 8 hours ago
          You don’t get 4-5 hours. During winter you get 2 if you’re lucky. 1.75 hours more likely. This is on my Ford F-150 lightning going 80 mph the entire time.
          • hvb2 8 hours ago
            If you care about driving far, you don't drive 80 in an EV, it's that simple. It might actually be the same with an ICE, slowing down a bit might save fuel so you end up with one fewer stop so in all it might be faster. Air resistance goes up exponentially with speed IIRC.

            I get it. There are worst case scenarios but you buy a car for the rule, not the exception.

            I owned a 2013 leaf with a range of 65 miles or so, without fast charging port because it was air cooled. So this wasn't a proper first/only car. But it worked like a charm for my daily commute...

            Did I drive 80 with it? No, 65 which was the speed limit anyway.

            Did I do road trips with it? No, we used the other EV for that

            It's just like software guys. There's no solutions, only tradeoffs

  • cladopa 22 hours ago
    It must be said: Mr Ford created way more wealth in the world than what it destroyed.

    For example, the Japanese discovered that importing Ford cars from Japan was cheaper that manufacturing those in Japan, including all the shipping cost.

    The same happened in Russia, Germany and most places of the West world.

    The new manufacturing method was a revolution that have generated trillions.

    • sidewndr46 20 hours ago
      > the Japanese discovered that importing Ford cars from Japan was cheaper that manufacturing those in Japan

      maybe I just don't understand, but something seems off with this statement?

      • Hasslequest 13 hours ago
        I think what they're getting at here is that it's cheaper for countries to import the car from themselves because you don't have to cover the cost of manufacturing, just the cost of transport (which is low, because you are importing it from yourself).
      • sushid 20 hours ago
        to Japan* I think
    • lysace 20 hours ago
      And now an authoritarian one-party country (I think it's decidedly sliding into a dictatorship) is winning car manufacturing - and possibly almost all of manufacturing except high-end semiconductors and optics.

      The future is going to be interesting. :/

      • tehjoker 18 hours ago
        I don't buy this but even if it were true, you could say the same if America was winning.
        • lysace 1 hour ago
          Not quite, but more importantly: American isn’t.
    • ProAm 22 hours ago
      Still a wild antisemitic so.... money isn't everything.
      • jazzyjackson 19 hours ago
        Gets undue credit for assembly lines, guns and pocket watches were moving that way too, I wonder what middle school history book publisher cemented his legacy
      • elorant 21 hours ago
        I don’t understand why you’re downvoted. Hitler considered him an inspiration and praised him in Mein Kampf. Ford funded and published “The Dearborn Independent” which was a newspaper full of libel against Jews. Sure he was a visionary industrialist, but also a vile human being.
        • ulfw 20 hours ago
          So is Elon Musk and yet he is the richest man on Earth, has meddled in government freely and fanboys still believe every fart that is coming out of him.

          He used to be into making cars too but that clearly fell off the wayside

          • kakacik 14 hours ago
            ... and has very little respect here. Some fanboys aren't a guide to amount of respect one deserves, regardless of topic.

            I must say he redeemed himself tiny little bit in my eyes when he blocked russian use of starlink in their war in Ukraine, I didn't register any apparent reason apart from stopping murdering of civilians by russians, but thats been happening during whole war in non-trivial numbers. But he also famously sabotaged their naval drones mid attack by disabling all of them during early phase of the war, to not sink half of black sea naval fleet at one go, so... a complicated, highly unreliable person.

            I think everybody can easily find deep flaws in him, be them personal or professional (ie he is POS father based on many accounts for example, thats not flying with most parents that know this). Then it matters if folks have firm hard-to-bend moral values or are more flexible with them. Based on experience most people are quite a bit flexible, otherwise they would have to hate themselves too a lot.

            • lostlogin 14 hours ago
              It’s deeply average that Musk is improving his behaviour when he stops helping Russia.
        • charcircuit 19 hours ago
          [flagged]
          • jazzyjackson 19 hours ago
            buZZER

            Sorry, libel against Jewish people is not a different opinion!

            • charcircuit 18 hours ago
              That is not what I said. The gp used the term "antisemitic" which by definition means having a negative opinion on semites. You are looking to argue semantics while I'm trying to answer a question.
  • luqtas 21 hours ago
    they also managed to buy and destroy a really proeminent 4x4 national company [0] it's tech was of course, eaten by them

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troller_Ve%C3%ADculos_Especiai...

  • dmoo 22 hours ago
  • ashwinnair99 16 hours ago
    Same story every time. Underestimate how different the market is, stay too long hoping it turns around, leave with nothing. Just had more zeroes than usual.
  • manarth 15 hours ago
  • dartharva 20 hours ago
    Ford burnt a lot in India too iirc, it had to exit the market rather unceremoniously