Ford F-150 Lighting Electric Marketing

The more I think about it, the more I’m not sure it’s really possible to market an electric vehicle. All this and more in The morning shift by October 6, 2021.

1st gear: everything about the F-150 Lightning is interesting

How to market an “eco” truck in America with red blood? The Financial Time I just posted a big post on the upcoming EV pickup scene, and it includes some sections that have… interested me in future conversations. From FT:

“Initially, there will be a political challenge with these vehicles”, says [Tyson Jominy, vice-president of data and analytics at JD Power]. “I don’t think Ford will play the green angle. They will play on the angle of the dollar and the cents, and on the technological potential. . . and try to make it apolitical.

Performance will also be a key selling point. David Hunter, owner of a gasoline F-150, has seen resistance among truck enthusiasts when discussing the Lightning on online auto forums. He says their skepticism reminds him of Ford’s 2011 introduction of the EcoBoost, a fuel-efficient six-cylinder engine. At the time, some aficionados compared it unfavorably to the roaring V8, despite the higher horsepower of the smaller engine.

“Anytime there’s something new, there’s going to be a certain setback,” says Hunter, who works at an auto accessories company in South Florida.

I’m not really sure there’s a way to successfully market this thing without putting a bunch of rakes in front of you to walk on. How Ford is going to make this F-150 cool and interesting when the question of looms … I wouldn’t want to be part of the Ford marketing team. Maybe Tesla did well not to have one.

2nd gear: good luck getting a Jetta

Production stopped in Mexico due to the shortage of chips, as Reuters reports:

Volkswagen will extend the shutdown of production in one of its segments at a plant in the central state of Puebla that produces the Jetta model from October 6 to 15, a union document revealed on Tuesday.

It comes as the industry faces a global semiconductor shortage after manufacturers shifted production to laptops, cellphones and video games during the pandemic.

It seems that obtaining semiconductor chips is a challenge these days. Did anyone else hear this?

3rd gear: automakers order enough chips for record production

Everyone kind of suspected that this flea drama would produce a real sort of rubber band, as that is still what is happening with the extremely efficient system of global markets that we enjoy these days. [Coughs.]

Either way, automakers are ordering more chips than ever before, enough to build a record number of cars, as the Financial Time reports:

“If you look at the current demand. . . in the automotive industry where we have excellent transparency vis-à-vis manufactured cars, current orders are more like cars from 110m to 120m [per year]”Managing Director Reinhard Ploss told the Financial Times.

The previous record was set in 2018, when 95 million cars and vans were delivered to customers, according to Moody’s.

[…]

The current shortage of essential components, which has led to the shutdown of factories around the world, could cause global auto production to drop to 77 million in 2021, according to AlixPartners, almost 8 million units lower than expected. before bottlenecks set in.

But Ploss said the order models suggested automakers could look to make up for lost production time in the months to come.

“There are a lot of things from which we can read the total market,” he said, distinguishing between components such as microcontrollers, which are designed for specific models and are easy to follow.

Would anyone be surprised if we all wrote stories about the auto industry having too many semiconductor chips in 2022 or 2023?

4th gear: lithium miners cannot meet the demand for electric vehicles

Speaking of the great efficiencies of global capitalism, lithium miners worry that they won’t be able to extract enough lithium from the ground to meet our (well-anticipated) demand for electric vehicles. Bloomberg explains that prices have more than doubled in the last year, but that was only after a serious drop:

“Funding for lithium projects is still too low, too late,” said Advantages of Cameron, minerals analyst at BMI in Melbourne, Australia. “The market deficit is already happening.”

A prolonged sag Since the peak of 2018, investment in the sector has slowed, while the pandemic has exacerbated supply constraints. On the demand side, the green energy transition has accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles and global lithium consumption is expected to quintuple by the end of this decade, according to BloombergNEF.

“As prices rise now, there will be some unknown projects and expansions yet to be announced that will help increase supply to meet demand. It’s almost a certainty. What is not certain is the number of unknown projects that exist, ”added Perks. “It is also possible that there is not enough lithium, then this could risk a slower deployment of electric vehicles.”

I don’t think anyone has been really caught off guard by the rise of electric vehicles, so I don’t know what has happened here.

5th gear: echoes of automotive regulations in an effort to make American planes cleaner

It’s not a car story, but it reads as such. States are trying to get the Fed to enforce global emissions standards on planes operating in the United States that are meeting more than a little resistance. Of Reuters:

The EPA is expected to get ahead of the United Nations aviation agency in approving standards to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution from new aircraft engines entering service after 2030, says the letter from Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, California and Minnesota and the International Clean Transportation Council (ICCT).

The latest US policy “favors ambitious targets and tax credits (for sustainable aviation fuel) over legally binding GHG targets,” the letter said. Last month, the White House announced it was targeting 20% less aviation emissions by 2030.

“Big Goals” and tax credits are all we do these days. It’s exactly the same story with our EV without obligation “mandates. “Why do Democrats bother to get elected if they don’t do anything during their term?

Reverse: Blast from the past Begins its origin story

Neutral: How would you market Lightning?

Do you just stream tug of war videos that top everything else on sale? Have you just donated your entire advertising budget to Greenpeace? What is the movement?