Ford announced a management restructuring this Thursday to streamline its product development and supply chain departments.
Doug Field’s role has been expanded from electric products, autonomous driving, and software systems to vehicle design and hardware engineering.
Who is Doug Field?
Doug Field graduated from MIT and worked at Ford for 20 years starting in 1987. He later joined Apple and was responsible for the development of the Mac computer.
However, Doug Field’s most glorious career was at Tesla. In 2013, he joined Tesla and became the chief engineer of the phenomenon-level product Model 3. During this period, Doug Field was not only responsible for the design and development of the product, but also participated in optimizing the traditional production process.
Musk highly praised Doug Field, calling him “talented.” After leaving Tesla in 2018, Doug Field returned to Apple as the project manager of Apple’s “Titan program” for self-driving cars.
Last September, Doug Field returned to Ford again to work on electric products, autonomous driving, and software systems.
Software-focused?
In this restructuring, Doug Field undoubtedly became the core figure of Ford’s entire electric business. At the same time, Ford recruited technology talent from Silicon Valley for its electric team.
Roz Ho, who has experience in HP as the Vice President and Global Software Director, and previously held multiple leadership positions at Microsoft, was appointed as the Chief Connected Vehicle and Software Officer at Ford.
Jae Park, who previously worked at Google and Amazon, was appointed Vice President of Digital Product Design at Ford.
It can be seen that all the newcomers are focused on software, including the operation system of the vehicle and the autonomous driving software.
Final Words
It is obvious that Ford is preparing and rapidly advancing a new generation of electrified products/platforms after Mach E and Lighting 150. However, compared to Tesla and new Chinese competitors rising rapidly, Ford needs to accelerate the pace of launching the next generation of products.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.