The automotive industry’s first, furtive steps into the realm of automated driving were parking assistance technologies. And Ford is dropping them like they’re hot as part of a new cost-saving strategy that will see it stop installing features that its customers don’t use.
Ford has tasked itself with finding $2 billion in savings across its entire business. While much of those savings will come from boring stuff (like falling freight costs and supply chain normalization), its chief operating officer, Kumar Galhotra, says that it’s also looking a real-time data to get rid of features its customers don’t use.
During a conference call Tuesday, Galhotra revealed that Ford is monitoring its connected vehicle data to determine which features are being used, and which aren’t so that it can dump the useless ones and save some money.
Read: Ford Paused F-150 Production Last Month, Temporarily Laid Off Nearly 10,000 UAW Workers
“So one example is an auto part feature that lets the customer parallel park automatically,” Galhotra said, “Very, very few people are using it. So we can remove that feature. It’s about $60 per vehicle, another $10 million per year. We’re doing very extensive bench-marking for our manufacturing, both internally because we have lots of good ideas within our system and externally at a station-by-station level.”
It is not yet clear what other features will be dropped as part of this measure, but it isn’t the only strategy the company is employing. The Blue Oval is also looking at the design of its vehicles, as well as its manufacturing processes.
“In one of our vehicle lines, we were using certain aero shields for fuel economy and the fresh eyes Kaizen review internally and some benchmarking, the team came up with a different way of delivering the same aero and save $40 per vehicle,” said Galhotra. “So that’s equivalent to about $10 million per year.”
It is also “benchmarking” its manufacturing processes. Galhotra said the company is looking at ideas its engineers develop internally, and receiving external inspiration. That it says has already led to about $8 million in savings for the Blue Oval.
