Ford Motor Company

The Ford Motor Company (often referred to simply as Ford; sometimes nicknamed FoMoCo, {{NYSE|F}} is an automobile maker founded by Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, and incorporated on June 16, 1903. According to Fortune magazine, DaimlerChrysler and Toyota Motor replaced Ford as the world's number two and three automobile manufacturers by revenue in 2004. For many years before that Ford was global number two behind General Motors. Ford remains one of the world's ten largest corporations by revenue.

A new direction for the new century

Under the leadership of the current chairman, William Clay Ford, Jr., the company (and Mr. Ford personally) stunned the industry and pleased environmentalists with an

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announcement of a planned 25 percent improvement in the average mileage of its light truck fleet - including its popular Sport Utility Vehicles - to be completed by the 2005 calendar year. Mr. Ford was also one of the first top industry executives to make regular use of an battery electric vehicle, a Ford Ranger EV, while the company contracted with the U. S. Postal Service for delivery of a large number of electric postal vans based on the Ranger EV platform. Many Ford vehicles now sport an emblem - a green leaf springing from a curving road-like twig, symbolic of the new "green" commitment to preserve the environment and reduce resource consumption while delivering safe, economical, and effective products to the motoring public. Note however, that FMC has made no significant progress toward the 2005 goal as of early 2005 (and in 2003 announced that it would not try to achieve this goal), has terminated its electric vehicle program. In this period Ford also introduced the "Excursion", a SUV larger than the Chevrolet Suburban. The Excursion is soon to be discontinued and replaced by an extended wheelbase version of the Ford Expedition. As with General Motor's Hummer H2 SUV, the Excursion is so large that its milage does not count toward the manufacture's Corporate Average Fuel Economy ("CAFE") milage.

Related Topics:
Battery electric vehicle - Ford Ranger EV - Hummer H2 - Corporate Average Fuel Economy

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