Ford Wants Best-Selling F-150 to Go Through Historic Diet

Last December, Ford CEO Jim Farley reiterated that “fixing quality is my No. 1 priority,” but warned that improvements won’t come overnight.

Various design flaws and other issues have indeed marred the launch of key products like the Mustang Mach-E, Bronco and next-generation F-150 (driveshaft, rust). And when you add reliability troubles and all those recalls—Ford topped the list of automakers with the most recalls in 2022—the picture isn’t very bright.

This week, the president of Ford Blue (internal combustion engine vehicles), Kumar Galothra, made it known that the company wants to improve quality in part by reducing production costs.

In an interview with Automotive News, he said Ford is aiming to limit the number of orderable combinations on the F-150 “by a magnitude that we've never seen before.” This work will be done in the coming months, with the results applied to the 2024 models.

Among other things, upcoming F-150 trucks will feature about 2,400 fewer parts than their predecessors. According to Galothra, that means many fewer parts to engineer, test and manage quality on. Others will be modified to some extent in order to further minimize complexity.

Apparently, the Explorer midsize SUV will also go on a substantial diet. As for production costs, which Galothra called uncompetitive, Ford is currently “benchmarking a lot of our competition and working with our suppliers to lower that part of our costs.”

One thing you can expect is longer-lasting platforms and therefore longer product cycles. Why? Because, as Galothra put it, customers are now valuing software more and more, and it’s easy to make changes over time with over-the-air updates.