After getting many interested last year, with its plan to build 250,000 hybrids a year by 2010, Ford Motor Co. chairman and CEO Bill Ford dropped a bombshell yesterday - sent an email to all Ford employees detailing not hybrid but flex-fuels cars production. Ford says it has taken this step as it does not expect the evolution of other fuel technologies and that he didn’t want to ‘wed ourselves to a single technology’.
This comes only after a month with his interview with Free Press. He mentions in the interview:
We are pushing very hard on ethanol and on hybrids and on hydrogen, and we’re committed to that future. Because ... it is clear to me that we are in a world of diminishing natural resources, so if we’re going to be successful in that world, we better put all our R&D muscle and future product development behind that, and we are.
This is shocking — something we cannot expect from Ford. Is Ford inspired by its success in the flexi-fuel side? Along with GM and Chrysler, it just sent a letter to all Members of Congress pledging a doubling of flex-fuel vehicle production by 2010 and the Ford/VeraSun Energy partnership opened the Midwest Ethanol Corridor yesterday.
Ford currently offers four flexible fuel vehicles — the 2006 F-150, Ford Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car and will produce up to 250,000 FFVs this year. In addition, Ford will also double the number of biofuel-capable vehicles that it produces in the US by 2010.
Via: Green Car Congress and Blog. Wired.Com
