With its stock trading close to a 6-year low late last month, Ford Motor CEO Jim Hackett gathered the automaker’s top 300 executives close to its headquarters located in Michigan for a global leadership meeting.
Hackett’s message: Ford should put in motion plans to restructure its business now in order to secure promised expenses savings, Ford executives present at the meeting stated.
“We have clarity of purpose and now it’s time to take action,” Hackett informed Reuters in an interview.
A major part of that plan to save money calls for the automaker to deepen partnerships with other automakers across the world to share factory floor capacity and make vehicles together, Ford executives informed Reuters.
Specifically, they stated Ford is engaged in discussions with Volkswagen AG and Mahindra regarding expansion of product and technology alliances.
With Volkswagen, discussions are aimed at how to expand a commercial vehicle tie-up they earlier announced to include collaboration in South America and Europe – where Ford is losing money – and co-develop other kinds of vehicles, according to a Volkswagen executive and two sources knowledgeable with Ford’s thinking who asked not to be identified.
Pablo Di Si, chief executive for Volkswagen in Latin America, informed Reuters the companies are learning a partnership in Brazil and the talks are “advancing positively,” although he did not anticipated an announcement until next year.
