The global spread of the epidemic has led to varying degrees of shutdowns and production stoppages at the brand's manufacturing plants around the world, and Ford has withdrawn its performance targets set at the beginning of the year, as well as taking out reserve funds to save itself, but that's not enough, as it is relying on the manufacturing capacity it already has to make mouthpieces all over the world.
Written by AutoR? The company's newest product is a new product that will be used in the next few years," he said, adding that the new product will be used in the next few years.
For Changan Ford, Ford's joint venture in China, the outbreak seems to have had a limited impact on plant shutdowns.
Changan Ford's main plant in Chongqing, which is not among the hardest-hit areas, has resumed work relatively early.
According to a Feb. 21 report in the Chongqing Business Daily, just after 9 a.m. on Feb. 19, a newly assembled Changan Ford Ruijie slowly rolled out of the assembly line at Changan Ford's three plants in the Liangjiang New District, becoming the first vehicle to come off the assembly line since Chongqing's push for an orderly resumption of work and production. On that day, a total of 51 units of the RUI and 29 units of the Forester were assembled from here.
As far as Changan Ford's position in China is concerned, the biggest difficulty is not capacity, but how to boost sales.
Ford released its 2019 sales figures in China in January, and the company sold 568,000 vehicles last year, down 26.1 percent from a year earlier, marking the third consecutive year of sharp declines in its China sales. Most notably, Changan Ford's sales in 2019 suffered another "cut", from 378,000 units in 2018 to 184,000 units in 2019, a 51 percent year-on-year decline.
Compared with Changan Ford's annual sales of nearly 1 million units in China during its heyday, it's already pitifully low.
Last April, Zhu Huarong, president of China's Changan Automobile Group, said at the Shanghai auto show that Changan Ford's sales would rebound by the end of this year as the company expands its product line in China.
In the face of 19 years of sales results, Ford Greater China President and CEO Anning Chen said very calmly: Although 2019 is a "challenging" year for Ford, but Ford's share of the high-end to luxury automobile market has stabilized, and the decline in sales in the low-end segment in the second half of the year also began to narrow. began to narrow in the second half of the year.
The two Changan Ford executives both predicted the same key point in time for the sales recovery, late 2019 to early 2020, but unfortunately that's when China got off to a bad start with the impact of the epidemic, so to speak.
While it is true that Changan Ford realized a slight year-on-year increase in December last year, this was also based on significant price cuts at the end. Even so, Changan Ford still fell sharply year-on-year last year, which shows how critical the market situation is.
In terms of products, according to Changan Ford planning, from 2019 to the end of 2021, Changan Ford will put at least 18 new models, including five new energy products. In August last year, Changan Ford synchronized the listing of the Focus Active, Taurus, and RuiJie ST (including RuiJie ST-Line) three new products, which can be seen as a further landing of its product strategy. And after the release of these new products, Yang Song, president of Changan Ford NDSD, once told the media: this year we have passed the darkest moment. But in the end, these new cars did not realize a significant increase in sales.
And last December Changan Ford launched the Rui Inter, which is expected to improve sales, the car are equipped with a 2.0T turbocharged engine + 8AT transmission, and the whole system is equipped with four-wheel drive as standard, with a price range of 189,800 yuan - 218,800 yuan.
It can be said that in the three major components and cost-effective caused a lot of concern, currently limited by the impact of the epidemic, the listing of three months of sales is still less than 3,000, the future of the market performance, there are still a lot of uncertainties.
With the spread of the epidemic, Ford factories located in different countries have also suffered a heavy blow.
March 23, Ford announced that in order to cope with the growing impact caused by the new crown virus, the company will suspend vehicle and engine production work in India, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam plants.
Ford said it will suspend production work in India from March 21, with plants in other countries closing later. Ford also revealed that the shutdown will last for several weeks. Mark?Ovenden, Ford's president of international markets, said, "We will continue to take real-time action, in addition to the additional safety measures we are taking to temporarily halt production work at our manufacturing sites in international markets."
Earlier, on March 17, Ford also decided to temporarily close all North American plants for 2 weeks to protect employee health and safety. The decision was also made to suspend production at the London plant from March 23rd and the Wales plant from March 25th.
Today, Ford announced another extension of the North American plant shutdowns beyond March 30th.
Since March 20, Ford has announced a series of aggressive initiatives to further ensure the company's cash flow stability as a response to the impact of the new coronavirus outbreak. Currently, Ford has informed creditors that the company will activate a total of $13.4 billion (about RMB 95 billion) including under the Ford Motor Company line of credit and $2 billion (about RMB 14.1 billion) under the Ford Motor Credit Company line of credit. These new cash additions will be used primarily to offset the temporary working capital impact of the production shutdown due to the new Crown pneumonia outbreak.
In addition, in light of the current uncertainty in the overall economy and the business impact of the unexpected new coronavirus, Ford has decided to withdraw its 2020 financial performance targets, which were released on Feb. 4, and will provide updated business targets when it reports first-quarter results on April 28th.
Meanwhile, Fitch downgraded Ford's credit rating to BBB- and gave it a negative outlook, and on March 11, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam?Jonas had also lowered Ford's price target for the stock.
So far, Ford's major plants around the world, except for those in China, have been dramatically affected.
But Ford is looking for a new way out, affected by the epidemic, cars can not be built, but the relevant medical equipment is in short supply, and can be opened normally.
Ford is working with a number of parties to produce anti-epidemic supplies, Tencent News reported today.
On March 24, in response to the crisis of the new Crown pneumonia outbreak, Ford Motor Co. decided to work closely with 3M and GE Healthcare, among others, to take full advantage of their engineering and manufacturing capabilities to design and rapidly produce much-needed medical equipment and protective gear to support and protect first responders and healthcare workers and patients on the front lines of the fight against the new Crown outbreak.
In addition, Ford, in partnership with the United Auto Workers (UAW), will produce more than 100,000 clear protective masks per week at Ford plants to protect healthcare workers, factory workers and sales associates. Ford will also utilize its 3D printing equipment to produce medical N95 protective masks.
To get to production faster, Ford and 3M are pooling their resources and utilizing existing components to produce the masks. These include small fans for seat ventilation in Ford F-150 seats, 3M?HEPA air filters that filter contaminants such as viral particulate droplets, and portable rechargeable battery packs that can power the masks for up to eight hours.
In addition to 3M's capacity, Ford is currently evaluating the production of new electrically-powered air-purifying protective masks at its plant in Michigan to help expand 3M's production capacity tenfold from what it has now.
In addition, at the request of U.S. government authorities, Ford is working with GE Healthcare to streamline the design and expand the capacity of GE Healthcare's medical ventilator products for patients with respiratory failure and breathing difficulties. In addition to GE Healthcare's manufacturing facilities, the ventilators could be produced at Ford plants.
At the same time, Ford Motor Co. has partnered with GE Healthcare to simplify the design and expand the production of GE Healthcare's ventilators for patients with respiratory failure and respiratory distress.
At the same time, Ford's U.S. design team is accelerating the design and testing of a full-face protective mask for use by paramedics and EMS personnel. The full-face protective mask prevents accidental exposure of the face and eyes to droplets and liquids, and works in conjunction with medical N95 masks to better protect medical personnel.
Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford (Bill?Ford) said: "For people in the United States and around the world, the current development of the new Crown pneumonia outbreak has been a hundred thousand times more urgent. This situation requires timely action and cooperation. By working together across industries, we can make a real difference to those on the front lines of the fight. Ford has stepped up to the plate and made our fair share of contributions whenever we have been faced with a crisis over the past 117 years of our history, and this time is no different."
But this contribution is actually a two-for-one strategy, on the one hand mitigating the impact of not being able to start work during the outbreak, the sale of medical equipment will allow Ford to relieve some of the financial pressures, while on the other hand Ford's reputational level can also get a certain boost into a socially responsible company.
But this degree of self-help still can not completely offset the losses brought about by the shutdown, Ford is still facing enormous pressure globally, and in China Changan Ford has a car sold out situation, will certainly further delay the Ford sales recovery node, overall 2020 opening, Ford has had a very difficult.
This article comes from the author of the automobile home car number, does not represent the views of the automobile home position.