DEARBORN, Mich. — In a shake-up reflecting the pressures on the American auto industry, Ford Motor replaced its chief executive, Mark Fields, on Monday and vowed to catch up in the race to build self-driving cars and define a new era in personal mobility.þþThe company said Jim Hackett, who had overseen the Ford subsidiary that works on autonomous vehicles, would immediately take the reins from Mr. Fields.þþDuring Mr. Fields’s three-year tenure — a period when Ford’s shares dropped 40 percent — he came under fire from investors and the company’s board for failing to expand the company’s core auto business and for lagging in developing the high-tech cars of the future.þþFord’s shares were up about 2 percent before the markets opened on Monday.þþThe board’s decision to change management was made on Friday, eight days after Mr. Fields had been sharply criticized during the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting for Ford’s deteriorating financial results.þþWilliam C. Ford Jr., the company’s chairman, said in an interview that he had subsequently met with Mr. Fields and that they had “decided mutually” that Mr. Fields would retire after 28 years with the company.þþThat cleared the way for the board to offer the top job to Mr. Hackett, 62, a longtime chief of the office furniture giant Steelcase and a former Ford director, who joined the company’s operational ranks last year as head of its “smart mobility” operation, which includes driverless technology.þþ“Extraordinary times require transformational leadership, and that’s what Jim has been his entire career,” said Mr. Ford, whose great-grandfather was Henry Ford, the company’s founder.þþMr. Hackett said the board had given him a free hand to transform the nation’s No. 2 automaker, including seeking alliances with Silicon Valley firms, changing its product lineup, and divesting itself of unprofitable global operations.þþMr. Fields, 56, could not be reached for comment. As recently as last week, Mr. Fields had been trying to strengthen Ford’s bottom line by cutting 1,400 salaried jobs. But, unable to reverse the stock decline, he ran out of time to carry out his strategy to cut costs and expand Ford’s lineup of trucks and sport utility vehicles, while also investing in autonomous and electrified vehicles.þþDespite spending heavily on self-driving research, Ford was struggling to keep pace with larger automakers such as General Motors and tech giants like Google, both of which have been testing self-driving vehicles. Ford is promising to have a fully autonomous vehicle on the road by 2021.þþThe upstart vehicle maker Tesla — which recently surpassed G.M. and Ford in market capitalization — is bringing its first mass-market electric model to market this year.þþAt the annual meeting on May 11, Mr. Fields said Ford was capable of staying competitive in the current market for new vehicles, while also “keeping one foot in the future” of an industry heading toward autonomous, battery-powered cars.þþYet Ford is showing troubling signs of decline. Profit in the first quarter dropped more than 30 percent from a year earlier, and the company’s market share in the United States fell slightly.þþ
Source: NY Times
