As part of our acceleration of the Way Forward plan, 70 percent of Ford, Lincoln and Mercury products (by volume) in North America will be new or significantly upgraded by the end of 2008 compared with 2006 models. These efforts will include the expansion of our product lineup in growth segments such as crossover vehicles.
We plan to accelerate the development of new products designed to meet shifting consumer preferences for more fuel-efficient, smaller vehicles. For more information see Sustainable Mobility Technologies. To facilitate this, we have reorganized our product development activities into a unified and integrated global organization that reports directly to our Chief Executive Officer, and we are developing a truly global product plan that takes full advantage of our global product development assets, technologies and people. By better leveraging our scale, we will be able to apply our global product development capital and engineering resources to fewer vehicle platforms, drivetrains and powertrains. This commonality of platforms, drivetrains and powertrains, in turn, will reduce complexity in our vehicles and processes. Moreover, as we make investments in new products, we will continue to improve our production system's quality, productivity and flexibility.
