Ford unveiled its new 2021 F-150 on Thursday, a hybrid truck loaded with features, and reportedly able to travel 700 miles on a tank of gas.
"This is the first major update for five or six years for us. It's America's best-selling vehicle, and we have to keep it, not just updated, but the best-in-class," said Jim Farley, Ford's chief operating officer.
Despite upgrades like over-the-air system software updates, the full-size pickup truck still relies partially on gas as fuel in an era of all-electric vehicles coming from the likes of Tesla or Nikola.
However, Farley noted that the auto giant has plans for that space as well.
"In the next 24 months, we will launch an all-electric F-150, and we aren't stopping there. We're also going to launch an all-electric transit van," he said. "The hybrid F-150 we're launching this fall is going to be a great bridge to that."
Even as Ford looks to the future, the automaker, like everyone else, had to contend with the present coronavirus pandemic, requiring changes and upgrades to their manufacturing operations in order to get back up to speed.
"It was a really difficult time for Ford, but we used that downtime to prepare for what we're going through now, which is getting up to full production," Farley said about the past several months. "This week is a marquee week for us. We're up almost to full production in North America, we're building production in Western Europe and in China, around the world."
He also explained how Ford drastically reconfigured its facilities to prevent the spread of coronavirus and made changes including aggressive cleaning, temperature checks, food delivered directly to workers, and customized personal protective equipment.
"We've had to put social distancing into our plants and redesign all the workspaces," he explained. "It's been months and months of planning, and it's all paid off now."
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
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.
