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An Interview With Ford CEO Alan Mulally

An Interview With Ford CEO Alan Mulally Molly: Hello everyone, I’m Molly Wood from CNET with another episode of CNET Conversations. This one is taking place here at CES 2010. I’m very excited to be interviewing the CEO of Ford, Mister Alan Mulally. Thank you so much for joining us Allan: Glad to be here Molly. Molly: I’m excited to be talking Tech and Cars at CES which is kind of what CES is turning into. So you and you just gave your keynote a couple of hours before this conversation. Now, talk to me a little bit about the evolution of the Ford Brand. I mean obviously everyone knows you for cars and tough cars and great muscle cars and family cars, but you’re really becoming kind of a Tech Brat. Alan: Well I think that’s true. I think that’s an affectionate thing right? Molly: Well you know, we’re your people in that case. Alan: Well you sure are. Clearly Ford is in a different place which you know, we committed to the consumers and we have a complete product line, small, medium and large, cars, utilities and trucks as you mentioned. Well we also commit to the customers and we be absolutely best in class in quality, fuel efficiency, safety and smart design. And that’s where the CES comes in because we adopted a point of view that the world is going to continue to move to smarter phones, small devices where that will be our interface with the internet plus with all of our information and all of our media and music. And so at Ford, we decided that we wanted to help the consumer have access to all those applications but also be able to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. So that’s what we announced today is that we’re bringing the internet to the car but we’re also have just a fabulous new app where we are seamlessly letting the consumers access all our information but also in focus and improve their driving efficiency. Molly: Right so this is—so sync is integrated not just the voice activation that you have before in terms of directions and music playback but the ability to really control applications using your Voice Pandora, Twitter. Now are you anticipating that people will literally be driving along composing a 140 character Twitt? Alan: Well they can almost do anything they want because they’re doing it by voice. I think another thing that you mentioned Molly that’s important was that we chose to have an open architecture. So instead of embedding the software in the computational capacity, we actually are using all of the apps that are developed for the mobile phones. So the only change we have to make is the small transition to allow that to operate with our myFord or sync system so that they can—the consumer can access that with their thumb. Same kind of controllers we do with all consumer electronics but have your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. And so all of the applications that are being developed today, which are going to accelerate right, were all going to be available for the consumers while they’re enjoying the Ford drive. Molly: So now I think the big question that everybody think has immediately when they hear this is that may still be some destruction there even if your hands are on the wheel. Is there a possibility that we’re going to be destructed in the car and then how do you mitigate that? Alan: Well you know Molly, I think it’s almost the opposite because you know as drivers, we’ve always had all of the different things to be destructed by whether it’s not just paying attention or thinking or know, conversations or especially now with you know, different devices where we have to actually interface with those devices. So all of our data says that by organizing information and making it so simple and elegant and smart to be able to interface with the devices without having to touch them, we are actually contributing to a more focused, safe drive and yet at the same time, you get access to all this phenomenal capability. Molly: Right, what I need actually is a robotic arm to give my toddler like a gold fish snack in the back and then we’re all the way there. Alan: Now Molly, let’s talk about that because we’re also bringing the internet to the car. So you will have a laptop in the back. Or you mind put in the back of your seat so your toddler is going to be watching their favorite movies and their favorite apps. They probably won’t have to talk to you so much. Molly: I love that, he’ll be destructed. How, now how do you keep in car technology from becoming obsolete? One of your initiatives is to let people bring their own devices, their own sort of access and connectivity into the car. Is that the way that you avoid you know, potentially building cars with in dash technology that’s going to run out of gas, so to speak. Alan: Well exactly; and of course you know the cycles on new vehicles, the product cycles are getting less and less. But they’re clearly not going to be as fast as the consumer electronics so that led us to adopt the strategy where we want to have an open architecture and then actually we’ve increased the access to the media center inside the cars. We have 2 USB ports. We have an SD port so that we can actually keep upgrading the vehicle yet to keep the interfaces the same so that as the applications come along, we can immediately provide that capability of the car. Molly: Now, one question I have about this idea of turning the car into a mobile hotspot is, is that a little bit redundant? Because you know, everybody is walking around CES with these really connected devices. You have smart books coming out that are 3G connected laptops. Are people actually just going to be sitting in the car in their own little bubbles with their gadgets? Why do they need you know, to bring a hotspot into the vehicle? Alan: Well I think the most important thing is that we all want to be connected all the time and just like when the features that we announced today was on MapQuest where you’d be inside, either have your phone or you have your laptop and you’re going out to dinner so you know, you look for some directions. Push another button that goes right to sync in your car, you walk in, you got your phone, you move it, so no interface with the car and the navigation system. So the whole idea is that we all want with information being—to us we want to be absolutely connected all the time. Now, Ford’s value at a proposition is that we allow you to do that but we also give you this very elegant, simple smart interface so it doesn’t detract from you driving because that is the most important thing. So you really going to get with the Ford App, you’re going to get the best of all worlds I think. Molly: So moving off of that in-car technology, what is your electric strategy? You’ve done some very good Hybrids we know and there are some electric cars here and there I think in the fleet. But do you have you know, a high profile Chevy vault-like electric plan? Alan: Well we’re not so interested in technology demonstrators because we have a pretty solid, robust technology road map that deals with fuel efficiency. And if I could, I just like to back up for a minute because what we have found and I think all of us know this is that the four things that people consider when they’re buying a car are especially the quality and also the fuel efficiency. No matter what the size of the vehicle whether it’s a Fiesta or whether it’s an F150, people want the most fuel efficiency. The next one is safety, is absolutely given, we have to be using the best technology for safety. Of course, the fourth is a smart technology like we’re talking about here the CES. In Ford’s case, we made a commitment to have a full product line but also that every one of them will be best in class. So every vehicle you’ll see it from Ford is best in class on fuel efficiency. So if you look at the Fusion that you mentioned earlier, 41 miles to the gallon, 8 miles a gallon better than our Japanese competitors. Every vehicle you see from Ford is going to be best in class. Now, what we see going forward is we’re going to continue to improve the internal combustion engine and that’s why you see things like Turbo Charging and Direct Fuel Injection. Not only do you improve the fuel efficiency by 20% it reduces the CO2 by 15% but also you get more torque at the lower RPM so you actually get a better driving experience. So we’re going to keep improving the internal combustion engine. And as you pointed out, the next step or the Hybrids, the next steps are all electric vehicles. We’re also keeping our eye on the Hydrogen vehicles because if you combine Hydrogen and the fuel cells and very capable batteries, then we’re actually having water coming out the tailpipe and running on electricity. Now on the electric vehicles and on the Hydrogen, the really key thing is having a partnership with the governments around the world because all of those applications are only going to make sense if we have a system solution where you’re generating the electricity clean and now you’re using electricity clean. So we’ll continue to work with the US Government and the other group is to make sure we have a system solution. Ford is going to continue to be on the leading edge of having these solutions no matter what we gravitate to as a country. Molly: Okay so still mapping it out about a little bit. Alan: Absolutely. Molly: Yes absolutely, I want to get you a couple of user questions and this is—it’s going to sound like a joke at first. But it’s actually pretty serious. There are companies hard at work on prototypes for flying cars, I think you back in the 60’s we all thought that by, why I wasn’t there, but a lot of people thought that by 2000. Alan: I notice something about those airplanes. Molly: We would have the flying cars—exactly. You know something about the airplanes, are you the guy to give us the flying car? Alan: No, but I think the idea is very interesting to this. As you pointed out, I had the honor to serve at the Boeing Company for 38 years and be on the design team for every Boeing Airplane and there’s nothing—there’s no technical reason why you can’t make a flying car and we have made some flying cars in the past. The problem is that when it comes to safe and efficient transportation, it’s just so much more efficient to have more people in the airplane and then go point to point where they want to go. Plus you don’t have all the different interactions with all the air traffic control. So it’s really about economics and safety and efficiency but it can be done but I think that we are to keep making safe and efficient transportation and the airplanes and we have to make safe and efficient transportation on cars. So I don’t see a lot of flying cars in the future. Molly: So let me go back to a middle ground because I think one thing people talk about sometimes when they talk about all this in-car technology, the potential destructions. All the things really that you can do in the car the you have you know, in the geek community, a lot of discussion about automated vehicles and obviously you know, DARP has been making a lot of in-roads there. Is that an evolutionary step? Will we see a significant portion of cars being basically self-driving at some point? Alan: I hope not it so fun, it so fun to drive a car. It is so fun to go where you want to go, when you want to go. When you’re asking that I was thinking about Henry Ford and you know, Henry Ford which is such an innovator. He just changed the world and one of the neat things that he believed that what he was really about was open up the highways to all mankind. So you can actually move around, you had freedom, you can actually work at the company also and you can afford the vehicles and I, even though we’ll add more automated features like we have Parking Assist for parallel parking and stuff. Our philosophy is that consumers, the ultimate pilot in the airplanes and also in the cars and we want to do everything we can to make the consumer or the driver as absolutely as good a driver as possibly can be. That’s again going back to the myFord sync. We want everybody to be able to have the freedom of automobiles to move around where they want to go but also have all the features and capability that the world’s going to provide them with Ford. Molly: So speaking of Henry Ford, do you see Ford or any American car brand becoming the dominant car brand in the world? Alan: Well clearly, the consumers will decide who will lead but you know, Ford is the 3rd, 4th largest corporation in the world, I mean Car Company in the world, is the 7th largest corporation in the United States, is the 17th largest corporation in the world. So we are, really appreciate the service that we provide to so many people around the world. Now with respect to your question, many people believe the fact that we focused on the Ford brand that we have a complete family now. We’re absolutely best in class and quality and fuel efficiency, safety and smart, that’s why the consumers are moving to Ford so fast. As you noticed, we also disclosed that 14 of the last 15 months, we’ve actually increased our market share during the worst recession the United States has ever been in. And many people believed we probably have the finest car lineup of any car, truck lineup, of any car company worldwide. So we’re just thrilled we’re going to, we lived to make, we lived to serve the customers with the best cars and trucks in the world and they’ll decide who’s going to be the best in the world. Molly: And as technology, one of them, I mean it sounds like it’s one of the major ways you get there and certainly one of the four but I think in the survey of people we hadn’t used sync, it was 32% of them said that they thought sync was a reason to buy a Ford vehicle. I mean how big a part of your strategy is really being this tech forward? Alan: Well just in the most, in the broadest sense Molly, it is the most important because what we do, we’re a technology company and we bring technical solutions to provide real world solutions for the consumer. So whether its quality or as fuel efficiency or at safety or smart technology like myFord sync, all of that is being provided by fabulously elegant technical solutions. So that’s our goals is every year on every vehicle, to improve that capability in all four of those criteria. Molly: Absolutely, I have one more from a colleague actually. Somewhat unrelated to tech but a lot of people asked me this on Twitter— Alan: They want to know when they’re going to get to next Fiesta? Molly: They wanted mostly about the flying car but also whether you feel like you may be sold more cars because you didn’t take out bail out money. Alan: Well I think that’s true. You know you think about it Molly, it was a little over a year and I was actually testifying in congress in support of two American competitors and the reason was and that was a very, a very big decision we made because what we were concerned about was that as the economy was slipping deeper into a recession and GM and Chrysler going into bankruptcy, they could have taken also all the supply base in the United States that supports everybody in the bankruptcy also. And that could actually resulted in recession going in the depression. So we thought for the good of the United States economy that we needed this support, temporary help. Temporary help for our competitors. But who would have thought would that that would be another defining moment for Ford because we didn’t want the money, we didn’t need the money, we had a great business plan, we’ve gone to the markets three years earlier, we’ve taken our own home improvement loan at 23.5 billion dollars based on a really solid business plan. We’re making a tremendous progress on our restructure, we actually accelerate the development of new products, and people want value. So everybody around the world saw that and I think within just a few weeks, 97% of the people knew that Ford wasn’t in the position that the other auto makers were and also we had a plan and of course, they really started getting on the internet, going to our websites and find out about the vehicles they found that Ford was really different. So clearly the sentiment for a great American car company has been a really plus for us and be able to exceed their expectations now with the finest cars in the world. I think it was really another defining moment for Ford. Molly: And then before I let you go, a lot of people need to know what kind of Ford car do you drive? Alan: Well I drive a different car every night and it is a lot of fun. And also most of the time, I drive competitor cars. And when I first arrived at Ford, the Ford Product Development Strategy was to be competitive but not necessarily be best in class outside the big SUV’s and the F150’s which were always the best. So we decide as a team that we’re going to compete with the best car companies in the world that we’re going to be best in class. Butt the only reason, the only way you can know that is to experience and drive your competitor’s cars. I’d like to remember when I was going to park at Ford for the first time with a Lexus or Toyota, you know, everybody was looking at me like I was a Space Cadet. What am I doing, driving the vehicles and then all of a sudden now, everybody is checking out the other cars and when we say, we’re going to be best in class that means that we have driven them, we’ve looked at the data on every measurable attribute. We know that the Ford vehicle is best in class. So it really is fun to drive the vehicles and remember, I grew up with the Toyotas and Hondas because Ford didn’t have a lot of small cars and I’ll tell you now as a designer that I’ve sold my Lexus cars and when you’re driving a Fiesta or a Focus or a Fusion or Taurus or—you are driving the best vehicles in the world. So I’d encourage everybody that they’ve got great choices with Ford and once you get in one and you feel a difference, you’re going to love your Ford. Molly: Thank you. Congratulations on a great year; we look forward to more tech innovations. Welcome to the Geek World. We actually warn you, we’re demanding, unpredictable and kind of difficult. Yes, a fellow geek. Alan: Very good, thanks a lot Molly. Molly: Good luck, thanks so much. I invite you all to join the conversation. You will see the full transcript of this interview eventually at cnet.com/conversations as well as future and past interviews. Thanks for watching.

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An Interview With Ford CEO Alan Mulally
Molly: Hello everyone, I’m Molly Wood from CNET with another episode of CNET Conversations. This one is taking place here at CES 2010. I’m very excited to be interviewing the CEO of Ford, Mister Alan Mulally. Thank you so much for joining us
Allan: Glad to be here Molly.
Molly: I’m excited to be talking Tech and Cars at CES which is kind of what CES is turning into. So you and you just gave your keynote a couple of hours before this conversation.
Now, talk to me a little bit about the evolution of the Ford Brand. I mean obviously everyone knows you for cars and tough cars and great muscle cars and family cars, but you’re really becoming kind of a Tech Brat.
Alan: Well I think that’s true. I think that’s an affectionate thing right?
Molly: Well you know, we’re your people in that case.
Alan: Well you sure are. Clearly Ford is in a different place which you know, we committed to the consumers and we have a complete product line, small, medium and large, cars, utilities and trucks as you mentioned. Well we also commit to the customers and we be absolutely best in class in quality, fuel efficiency, safety and smart design. And that’s where the CES comes in because we adopted a point of view that the world is going to continue to move to smarter phones, small devices where that will be our interface with the internet plus with all of our information and all of our media and music. And so at Ford, we decided that we wanted to help the consumer have access to all those applications but also be able to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road. So that’s what we announced today is that we’re bringing the internet to the car but we’re also have just a fabulous new app where we are seamlessly letting the consumers access all our information but also in focus and improve their driving efficiency.
Molly: Right so this is—so sync is integrated not just the voice activation that you have before in terms of directions and music playback but the ability to really control applications using your Voice Pandora, Twitter. Now are you anticipating that people will literally be driving along composing a 140 character Twitt?
Alan: Well they can almost do anything they want because they’re doing it by voice. I think another thing that you mentioned Molly that’s important was that we chose to have an open architecture. So instead of embedding the software in the computational capacity, we actually are using all of the apps that are developed for the mobile phones.
So the only change we have to make is the small transition to allow that to operate with our myFord or sync system so that they can—the consumer can access that with their thumb. Same kind of controllers we do with all consumer electronics but have your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. And so all of the applications that are being developed today, which are going to accelerate right, were all going to be available for the consumers while they’re enjoying the Ford drive.
Molly: So now I think the big question that everybody think has immediately when they hear this is that may still be some destruction there even if your hands are on the wheel. Is there a possibility that we’re going to be destructed in the car and then how do you mitigate that?
Alan: Well you know Molly, I think it’s almost the opposite because you know as drivers, we’ve always had all of the different things to be destructed by whether it’s not just paying attention or thinking or know, conversations or especially now with you know, different devices where we have to actually interface with those devices. So all of our data says that by organizing information and making it so simple and elegant and smart to be able to interface with the devices without having to touch them, we are actually contributing to a more focused, safe drive and yet at the same time, you get access to all this phenomenal capability.
Molly: Right, what I need actually is a robotic arm to give my toddler like a gold fish snack in the back and then we’re all the way there.
Alan: Now Molly, let’s talk about that because we’re also bringing the internet to the car. So you will have a laptop in the back. Or you mind put in the back of your seat so your toddler is going to be watching their favorite movies and their favorite apps. They probably won’t have to talk to you so much.
Molly: I love that, he’ll be destructed. How, now how do you keep in car technology from becoming obsolete? One of your initiatives is to let people bring their own devices, their own sort of access and connectivity into the car. Is that the way that you avoid you know, potentially building cars with in dash technology that’s going to run out of gas, so to speak.
Alan: Well exactly; and of course you know the cycles on new vehicles, the product cycles are getting less and less. But they’re clearly not going to be as fast as the consumer electronics so that led us to adopt the strategy where we want to have an open architecture and then actually we’ve increased the access to the media center inside the cars. We have 2 USB ports. We have an SD port so that we can actually keep upgrading the vehicle yet to keep the interfaces the same so that as the applications come along, we can immediately provide that capability of the car.
Molly: Now, one question I have about this idea of turning the car into a mobile hotspot is, is that a little bit redundant? Because you know, everybody is walking around CES with these really connected devices. You have smart books coming out that are 3G connected laptops. Are people actually just going to be sitting in the car in their own little bubbles with their gadgets? Why do they need you know, to bring a hotspot into the vehicle?
Alan: Well I think the most important thing is that we all want to be connected all the time and just like when the features that we announced today was on MapQuest where you’d be inside, either have your phone or you have your laptop and you’re going out to dinner so you know, you look for some directions. Push another button that goes right to sync in your car, you walk in, you got your phone, you move it, so no interface with the car and the navigation system.
So the whole idea is that we all want with information being—to us we want to be absolutely connected all the time. Now, Ford’s value at a proposition is that we allow you to do that but we also give you this very elegant, simple smart interface so it doesn’t detract from you driving because that is the most important thing. So you really going to get with the Ford App, you’re going to get the best of all worlds I think.
Molly: So moving off of that in-car technology, what is your electric strategy? You’ve done some very good Hybrids we know and there are some electric cars here and there I think in the fleet. But do you have you know, a high profile Chevy vault-like electric plan?
Alan: Well we’re not so interested in technology demonstrators because we have a pretty solid, robust technology road map that deals with fuel efficiency. And if I could, I just like to back up for a minute because what we have found and I think all of us know this is that the four things that people consider when they’re buying a car are especially the quality and also the fuel efficiency. No matter what the size of the vehicle whether it’s a Fiesta or whether it’s an F150, people want the most fuel efficiency.
The next one is safety, is absolutely given, we have to be using the best technology for safety. Of course, the fourth is a smart technology like we’re talking about here the CES. In Ford’s case, we made a commitment to have a full product line but also that every one of them will be best in class. So every vehicle you’ll see it from Ford is best in class on fuel efficiency. So if you look at the Fusion that you mentioned earlier, 41 miles to the gallon, 8 miles a gallon better than our Japanese competitors.
Every vehicle you see from Ford is going to be best in class. Now, what we see going forward is we’re going to continue to improve the internal combustion engine and that’s why you see things like Turbo Charging and Direct Fuel Injection. Not only do you improve the fuel efficiency by 20% it reduces the CO2 by 15% but also you get more torque at the lower RPM so you actually get a better driving experience. So we’re going to keep improving the internal combustion engine. And as you pointed out, the next step or the Hybrids, the next steps are all electric vehicles. We’re also keeping our eye on the Hydrogen vehicles because if you combine Hydrogen and the fuel cells and very capable batteries, then we’re actually having water coming out the tailpipe and running on electricity.
Now on the electric vehicles and on the Hydrogen, the really key thing is having a partnership with the governments around the world because all of those applications are only going to make sense if we have a system solution where you’re generating the electricity clean and now you’re using electricity clean. So we’ll continue to work with the US Government and the other group is to make sure we have a system solution.
Ford is going to continue to be on the leading edge of having these solutions no matter what we gravitate to as a country.
Molly: Okay so still mapping it out about a little bit.
Alan: Absolutely.
Molly: Yes absolutely, I want to get you a couple of user questions and this is—it’s going to sound like a joke at first. But it’s actually pretty serious. There are companies hard at work on prototypes for flying cars, I think you back in the 60’s we all thought that by, why I wasn’t there, but a lot of people thought that by 2000.
Alan: I notice something about those airplanes.
Molly: We would have the flying cars—exactly. You know something about the airplanes, are you the guy to give us the flying car?
Alan: No, but I think the idea is very interesting to this. As you pointed out, I had the honor to serve at the Boeing Company for 38 years and be on the design team for every Boeing Airplane and there’s nothing—there’s no technical reason why you can’t make a flying car and we have made some flying cars in the past. The problem is that when it comes to safe and efficient transportation, it’s just so much more efficient to have more people in the airplane and then go point to point where they want to go. Plus you don’t have all the different interactions with all the air traffic control.
So it’s really about economics and safety and efficiency but it can be done but I think that we are to keep making safe and efficient transportation and the airplanes and we have to make safe and efficient transportation on cars. So I don’t see a lot of flying cars in the future.
Molly: So let me go back to a middle ground because I think one thing people talk about sometimes when they talk about all this in-car technology, the potential destructions. All the things really that you can do in the car the you have you know, in the geek community, a lot of discussion about automated vehicles and obviously you know, DARP has been making a lot of in-roads there. Is that an evolutionary step? Will we see a significant portion of cars being basically self-driving at some point?
Alan: I hope not it so fun, it so fun to drive a car. It is so fun to go where you want to go, when you want to go. When you’re asking that I was thinking about Henry Ford and you know, Henry Ford which is such an innovator. He just changed the world and one of the neat things that he believed that what he was really about was open up the highways to all mankind. So you can actually move around, you had freedom, you can actually work at the company also and you can afford the vehicles and I, even though we’ll add more automated features like we have Parking Assist for parallel parking and stuff. Our philosophy is that consumers, the ultimate pilot in the airplanes and also in the cars and we want to do everything we can to make the consumer or the driver as absolutely as good a driver as possibly can be. That’s again going back to the myFord sync.
We want everybody to be able to have the freedom of automobiles to move around where they want to go but also have all the features and capability that the world’s going to provide them with Ford.
Molly: So speaking of Henry Ford, do you see Ford or any American car brand becoming the dominant car brand in the world?
Alan: Well clearly, the consumers will decide who will lead but you know, Ford is the 3rd, 4th largest corporation in the world, I mean Car Company in the world, is the 7th largest corporation in the United States, is the 17th largest corporation in the world. So we are, really appreciate the service that we provide to so many people around the world.
Now with respect to your question, many people believe the fact that we focused on the Ford brand that we have a complete family now. We’re absolutely best in class and quality and fuel efficiency, safety and smart, that’s why the consumers are moving to Ford so fast. As you noticed, we also disclosed that 14 of the last 15 months, we’ve actually increased our market share during the worst recession the United States has ever been in. And many people believed we probably have the finest car lineup of any car, truck lineup, of any car company worldwide. So we’re just thrilled we’re going to, we lived to make, we lived to serve the customers with the best cars and trucks in the world and they’ll decide who’s going to be the best in the world.
Molly: And as technology, one of them, I mean it sounds like it’s one of the major ways you get there and certainly one of the four but I think in the survey of people we hadn’t used sync, it was 32% of them said that they thought sync was a reason to buy a Ford vehicle. I mean how big a part of your strategy is really being this tech forward?
Alan: Well just in the most, in the broadest sense Molly, it is the most important because what we do, we’re a technology company and we bring technical solutions to provide real world solutions for the consumer. So whether its quality or as fuel efficiency or at safety or smart technology like myFord sync, all of that is being provided by fabulously elegant technical solutions. So that’s our goals is every year on every vehicle, to improve that capability in all four of those criteria.
Molly: Absolutely, I have one more from a colleague actually. Somewhat unrelated to tech but a lot of people asked me this on Twitter—
Alan: They want to know when they’re going to get to next Fiesta?
Molly: They wanted mostly about the flying car but also whether you feel like you may be sold more cars because you didn’t take out bail out money.
Alan: Well I think that’s true. You know you think about it Molly, it was a little over a year and I was actually testifying in congress in support of two American competitors and the reason was and that was a very, a very big decision we made because what we were concerned about was that as the economy was slipping deeper into a recession and GM and Chrysler going into bankruptcy, they could have taken also all the supply base in the United States that supports everybody in the bankruptcy also. And that could actually resulted in recession going in the depression.
So we thought for the good of the United States economy that we needed this support, temporary help. Temporary help for our competitors. But who would have thought would that that would be another defining moment for Ford because we didn’t want the money, we didn’t need the money, we had a great business plan, we’ve gone to the markets three years earlier, we’ve taken our own home improvement loan at 23.5 billion dollars based on a really solid business plan. We’re making a tremendous progress on our restructure, we actually accelerate the development of new products, and people want value.
So everybody around the world saw that and I think within just a few weeks, 97% of the people knew that Ford wasn’t in the position that the other auto makers were and also we had a plan and of course, they really started getting on the internet, going to our websites and find out about the vehicles they found that Ford was really different. So clearly the sentiment for a great American car company has been a really plus for us and be able to exceed their expectations now with the finest cars in the world. I think it was really another defining moment for Ford.
Molly: And then before I let you go, a lot of people need to know what kind of Ford car do you drive?
Alan: Well I drive a different car every night and it is a lot of fun. And also most of the time, I drive competitor cars. And when I first arrived at Ford, the Ford Product Development Strategy was to be competitive but not necessarily be best in class outside the big SUV’s and the F150’s which were always the best. So we decide as a team that we’re going to compete with the best car companies in the world that we’re going to be best in class. Butt the only reason, the only way you can know that is to experience and drive your competitor’s cars.
I’d like to remember when I was going to park at Ford for the first time with a Lexus or Toyota, you know, everybody was looking at me like I was a Space Cadet. What am I doing, driving the vehicles and then all of a sudden now, everybody is checking out the other cars and when we say, we’re going to be best in class that means that we have driven them, we’ve looked at the data on every measurable attribute. We know that the Ford vehicle is best in class.
So it really is fun to drive the vehicles and remember, I grew up with the Toyotas and Hondas because Ford didn’t have a lot of small cars and I’ll tell you now as a designer that I’ve sold my Lexus cars and when you’re driving a Fiesta or a Focus or a Fusion or Taurus or—you are driving the best vehicles in the world. So I’d encourage everybody that they’ve got great choices with Ford and once you get in one and you feel a difference, you’re going to love your Ford.
Molly: Thank you. Congratulations on a great year; we look forward to more tech innovations. Welcome to the Geek World. We actually warn you, we’re demanding, unpredictable and kind of difficult. Yes, a fellow geek.
Alan: Very good, thanks a lot Molly.
Molly: Good luck, thanks so much. I invite you all to join the conversation. You will see the full transcript of this interview eventually at cnet.com/conversations as well as future and past interviews. Thanks for watching.

Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services

An Interview With Ford CEO Alan Mulally

An Interview With Ford CEO Alan Mulally -

An Interview With Ford CEO Alan Mulally -