Covid-19: Ford F-150, Bronco debuts to be delayed by two months; company priority to save cash – report

Launches of the Ford F-150 and Bronco appear to be delayed approximately by the amount of time the automaker’s production plants have been idle, Bloomberg reported.

Ford had initially planned for the resumption of production in North America from April 6 at its Hermasillo plant with other sites to follow suit from April 14, however these too had been postponed indefinitely. Given the near-two month duration since the US plants closure from March 20, this would likely mean a delay of around two months before the launches take place.

The Blue Oval had planned for production to restart earlier this week from May 18 as it is in great need of profits from the new models in order to recover from its predicted US$5 billion (RM21.7 billion) operating loss in this quarter, according to the report. The updated F-150 mid-sized pick-up, Bronco and the fully-electric Mach-E have been initially scheduled to enter production by end of the year.

“Given our inability to work in the assembly plants during the shelter-in-place restrictions, it will have an impact on programme timing, in terms of the launches. But we expect the launch delays to be commensurate with the duration of the shutdown period,” said Hau Thai-Tang, head of product development and purchasing at Ford, adding that the company’s main goal at this time is to save cash.

Meanwhile, demand for the all-electric Mach-E has seen its first year allocation to be ‘just about sold out’ by mid-March, having attracted 32,000 bookings by January. The Mach-E base model starts with 254 hp and 420 Nm of torque, while the top GT version outputs 439 hp and 830 Nm in Performance Edition guise.

GALLERY: Ford Mustang Mach-E

GALLERY: Ford Bronco spyshots

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