This year has been a rollercoaster ride amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but despite the many struggles faced by the American public, Ford Motor Company is pushing a message to make sure the virus is snuffed out in 2021.
The automaker is rolling out its #FinishStrong campaign to air during college and NFL football games in the first three days of January to replace its F-150 truck ads. The ad, narrated by actor Bryan Cranston, aims to encourage viewers to continue following coronavirus safety guidelines.
"We really were inspired by some of the data we were seeing coming out of the University of Washington, where if we just followed some of these safe COVID protocols and everybody did their part, we're not helpless. We can save more than 50,000 incremental lives," Jim Baumbick, vice president, enterprise product line management, told Cheddar.
At the onset of the pandemic, Ford was one of several American companies tapped to help in the fight against it. The company says it has since produced more than 50,000 ventilators, 1.4 million washable gowns, and nearly 50 million masks.
Furthermore, Ford has pledged to produce 100 million masks in total into 2021, according to Baumbick, who said that it's the very least the manufacturer could do while people on the frontlines work to keep citizens safe.
"These healthcare workers are so inspirational. We can honor them by actually reducing the load on the healthcare system and actually trying to mitigate the transmission of this deadly disease," he explained.
Meanwhile, as the country waits for the COVID-19 vaccines to be more widely available, Baumbick said Ford will do its part in providing doses to workers that request it but will not mandate it as a requirement to continue working.
Health and safety for employees and potential customers are at the top of Ford's list of priorities, Baumbick said, but the company is also committed to improving the health of the environment as it looks to expand its fleet of electric vehicles in the wake of its Mustang Mach-E. He noted that as the electric vehicle market continues to become more crowded, the Mustang is "soon to be followed by the F-150 battery electric vehicle."
"And we just launched our transit battery vehicle. The commercial space is an incredible opportunity to have a big impact, not just to businesses and their overall cost of ownership, but to the environment, which is so central to this transition," Baumbick added.
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A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
