Tag: ford

Pham Van Dung, former CEO of Ford Vietnam, and Nguyen Thien Minh, co-founder of ride-hailing app Be, have taken up jobs at transport services provider Tasco.

Ford India has made the ‘final’ settlement offer to the workers of its Chennai plant, offering a deadline of September 23, 2022 to accept it. The American carmaker, who announced its plan to stop manufacturing vehicles in India last year, has continuously been in failed negotiations with the Chennai Ford Employees Union (CFEU) regarding the severance package for the factory employees. Now, Ford has presented its final severance package to the Chennai car factory Union and the company has said that it will be valid from September 5, 2022, to September 23, 2022.

In its official statement, Ford India said, “The Company has always cared for its employees and has taken steps to help them to the extent possible. Unfortunately, the Company’s attempts to negotiate a fair severance package have not yielded results because of the Union’s unreasonable demands (of an average of 215 equivalent days of wages per completed year of service). Union also failed to recognize that no company which has decided to stop production because of significant accumulated losses and no sustainable path forward can meet such demands.”

Alternatively, Ford has been trying to find a suitable buyer for the plant, however, as that hasn’t happened yet, the carmaker has decided to roll out the final severance settlement offer to employees. Ford India says that on average, the settlement is equivalent to 130 days of gross wages per completed year of service. The severance packages will range from a minimum amount of Rs. 33 lakh to a maximum cap of Rs. 85 lakh, which is a cumulative average severance of Rs. 41 lakh per employee.

Ford says, “The final severance settlement offer translates to an average of about 4.6 years or 56-month salary for each employee (from a minimum of 3.5 years i.e., 43 months to a maximum of 8 years i.e., 100 months), thus assuring employees with adequate financial cushion and adequate time to decide their next action. The Company strongly encourages employees to accept and sign-up for the final severance settlement offer, valid from September 5, 2022, to September 23, 2022, for their own and their family’s future. Further, employees who take the final severance settlement offer will be paid wages until September 30, 2022.”

Post the deadline, Ford says that if the Company were to retrench employees and pay the statutory compensation, the employees will only be entitled to severance pay of 15 days of every completed year of service.

Earlier in August 2022, Ford India signed a Unit Transfer Agreement (UTA) with Tata Passenger Electric Mobility Limited (TPEML) for the acquisition of the former’s manufacturing plant in Sanand, Gujarat. The agreement includes entire land and buildings, the vehicle manufacturing facility as well as the machinery and equipment inside. It also includes the transfer of all eligible employees of Ford India working at the Sanand plant to Tata Motors. The Indian auto giant acquired the facility from Ford for a sum of Rs. 725.7 crore exclusive of taxes, the company said in a statement. Both companies signed a tripartite MoU on May 30, 2022.

Ford Europe together with 27 companies has joined an appeal to the European Union (EU) to ensure all new cars and vans in Europe are zero-emission from 2035 and to establish mandatory targets for charging infrastructure. The appeal insists that removing fossil fuel-burning vehicles from the road is imperative for Europe to reach its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, and to help avoid the worst impacts of climate change on people and the planet. This includes enacting legislation that establishes standards and a clear timeline for the industry and suppliers to follow, to ensure the transition to electric vehicles.

The EU decision-makers are currently deciding on new clean car rules, following a proposal by the EU Commission supported by the companies making the appeal that only zero-emission new cars and vans can be sold EU-wide from 2035. The European Parliament and EU governments will decide their positions in June, with the final law expected to be adopted in autumn.

For Ford Europe, the road towards zero-emission vehicles is being paved by a new generation of seven, all-electric, fully connected passenger vehicles, and vans, coming to Europe by 2024. Leading the charge are the Mustang Mach-E, which last year achieved maximum safety and green ratings from Euro NCAP and Green NCAP, and the E-Transit, which received the Gold Award from Euro NCAP for its advanced driver assistance systems.

All the electricity sourced at the company’s manufacturing sites in Europe is already 100 per cent renewable. The planned production of electric vehicles in Cologne, Germany, is now expected to be 1.2 million vehicles over six years, with a total product investment of $2 billion, helping to bring more electric vehicles to customers in Europe. Ford’s BlueOval charging network has over 3 lakh charge points in Europe, while for Ford employees, 1,000 charging stations will be added to the company’s European sites by 2023.

Ford Motor said on Monday vehicle production and orders in Europe have been hit by the global semiconductor shortage as well as the conflict in Ukraine.

The U.S. automaker said it will idle its German plants in Saarlouis and Cologne, mostly due to the global chip shortage. That also led it to stop taking new orders for the S-Max and Galaxy vehicles built in Valencia, Spain. Ford said it has orders for both products that take it beyond September and that existing orders will be fulfilled.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also has caused parts shortages at a Volkswagen plant in Poland that builds Ford’s Tourneo Connect vehicle, leading to a temporary halt of production, Ford said.

“We continue to monitor the situation on a daily basis in conjunction with our partners at VW and will have more to say on this at a later date,” Ford said in a statement.

The Ukraine conflict has also led to supply issues that have forced Ford to offer consumers the Focus car with a smaller, 8-inch dashboard screen, instead of the 13.2-inch SYNC4 screen that was part of the updated vehicle’s introduction, the company said, without providing details.

Ford Motor Co expects to firm up capital allocation plans for India in the second half of 2021, a senior executive said in an email to staff, as the automaker overhauls its strategy in a loss-making market. Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford has tasked senior executive Steven Armstrong with evaluating investment plans for India in his new role as transformation officer, South America, and India, the automaker said in a separate statement this week.

“We have a lot of work to do as we continue to assess our capital allocations in the market,” Dianne Craig, president of Ford’s International Markets Group (IMG), said in an email to staff on Wednesday, referring to India.

“While we expect to have an answer in the second half of this year, the appointment of Steven…will help focus our efforts and speed up the process,” she said.

IMG includes India, where the company employs more than 16,000, and 100 other markets.

Ford India head Anurag Mehrotra will report to Armstrong, who previously headed the Changan Ford joint venture in China and will take on his new role from May 1, the company said.

Confirming that the company expects to reach a capital allocation decision in the second half of the year, a Ford India spokesman said that the country is an important market and a source of global powertrains for its Ranger SUV.

Ford has said previously it will allocate capital consistent with its plan to generate consistently strong cash flows and achieve an 8% company adjusted EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) margin.

The automaker beat Wall Street’s first-quarter profit estimate late on Wednesday, telling investors all its markets under IMG were profitable except for India.

CEO Jim Farley, who is overseeing an $11 billion global restructuring of Ford, wants to boost profits in India but the country is a lower priority than some other markets, sources said previously.

Ford is not the first western automaker to struggle to win over India’s frugal buyers and turn a profit in a market dominated by Suzuki Motor Corp’s and Hyundai Motor’s extensive line-up of mainly low-cost cars.

General Motors exited the domestic market in 2017 after 20 years, while Harley-Davidson Inc packed up last year after a decade of unsuccessful efforts to gain a foothold.

Ford entered India 25 years ago but has a less than 2% share of the passenger vehicles market in the world’s second most populous nation, where car penetration is lower than in the U.S. and China.

A tie-up with domestic automaker Mahindra & Mahindra, now called off, would have ended most of Ford’s independent operations in India but allowed it to launch new vehicles faster, at a reduced cost, and with lower investment.

The two companies planned to develop at least three new SUVs and share powertrains.

Ford will now need to pick vehicles from its global portfolio to sell in India, or develop new ones, a source said.

The joint venture would have also helped Ford tackle low plant utilization in the country, which remains one of its biggest problems, the person added.

Two years ago Ford used only around 60% of its total annual production capacity of 440,000 units across two Indian plants, with the pandemic reducing it to as little as 20% last fiscal year.