Financial Health

Asia offers tremendous opportunities for our company. The fastest-growing markets for automobiles are in rapidly developing countries, especially China and India. China will remain the largest car market in the world for the foreseeable future, and India is projected to be the third-largest market in the world for the coming decade. By 2020, annual vehicle sales in the Asia Pacific Africa region will likely reach 49 million vehicles, with about 32 million of them in China.²

We estimate that 60 to 70 percent of Ford’s growth in the next 10 years will come from this part of the world. Today, one in every five vehicles we sell globally is in Asia Pacific. By 2020, it will be one in three. Between now and the end of the decade, there will be a total driving age population of 2 billion in Asia Pacific, including 1.15 billion in China and 500 million in India, with their average annual income beyond the vehicle ownership threshold level (equal to approximately $5,000 per capita GDP³).

To keep pace with this enormous growth, we are building new plants and expanding existing ones, hiring workers, growing our dealer networks, and further developing our supply chain across China, India and Thailand.

We are investing $6.7 billion in Asia Pacific and currently employ some 23,000 people in our wholly owned and consolidated joint ventures in the region. We are building or have recently opened 10 new plants in Asia Pacific – seven in China, two in India and one in Thailand. By 2015 we’ll have the capacity to produce 2.7 million vehicles in the region.

In 2014, we will open our Changan Ford Automobile (CAF) Chongqing #3 Assembly Plant and CAF Chongqing Transmission Plant in Chongqing, China – our largest manufacturing concentration outside of Michigan.

To fuel all of this growth, we plan to hire about 6,000 employees in Asia Pacific in 2014, the majority of them hourly. We also have announced plans to expand our research and development facility in China, where we now have our regional headquarters, boosting the number of employees by more than 50 percent through 2018. We plan to add approximately 200 new employees each year, bringing the number of research and development employees to around 2,000 people.

Our strategy in Asia Pacific continues to be to grow aggressively with an expanding portfolio of global products with manufacturing hubs in China, India and Thailand.

Our market share in the region was a record 3.5 percent for 2013, up by 0.7 percentage points compared with 2012. The improvement was driven by China, where our market share for the full year rose to a record 4.1 percent, up by 0.9 percentage points compared with 2012.

In China, we manufacture and sell passenger vehicles through our joint venture Changan Ford Automotive (CAF), in which we have a 50 percent stake. Commercial vehicles like the Ford Transit are manufactured and sold through Jiangling Motors Corporation (JMC). Ford owns a 32 percent stake in JMC.

In 2013, we added about 100 dealers in China, bringing the total number of Ford dealers in China to over 600. This doesn’t include new Lincoln dealers in China, which we are in the process of recruiting. We will be bringing the Lincoln portfolio to China in the second half of 2014 to tap into the luxury car segment in one of the world’s most important auto markets.

In India, meanwhile, the number of dealers is projected to grow by 22 percent between 2013 and 2015. India is becoming a global export hub for Ford.

Small cars account for 57 percent of our Asia Pacific Africa industry sales volume and are anticipated to continue to benefit from favorable government policies. According to industry consultancy IHS Automotive , the Ford Focus was the best-selling nameplate in China in 2012 and 2013. The Ford Focus sold 403,640 wholesales in China in 2013, up 36 percent from 296,360 wholesales in 2012. We have continued this success with the introduction of the all-new Ford EcoSport in 2013. The EcoSport is based on Ford’s global B-car platform, like the Fiesta, and was developed from a previous-generation model that has proved extremely popular in South America since its launch in 2003.

At the same time, we know that our long-term success in these developing and revitalizing economies will depend on our offering new types of mobility solutions that are sustainable and tailored to the unique needs of these markets. Our Blueprint for Mobility is aimed at ensuring we do just that. During 2012, for example, we kicked off a novel project in the region of Chennai, where we have manufacturing operations. The project, called SUMURR (Sustainable Urban Mobility with Uncompromised Rural Reach), made use of a Ford Endeavour that was designed to handle difficult terrain and traverse areas previously unreachable by four-wheeled vehicles. Medical professionals traveled in the Endeavour to reach their patients and to transport those patients to clinics. The health care teams also could use their laptops and cell phones to connect – via a wireless connection – to doctors and medical records. In all, 41 pregnant women delivered healthy babies thanks in large part to the Ford pilot project. SUMURR ultimately reached another 3,100 people as our partners traveled to 54 villages to build community awareness on issues of maternal and child health. Following the success of the pilot, we’re exploring similar programs in other parts of rural India and in other countries where we have manufacturing operations. Ford invested about $250,000 directly in the project, plus significantly more in terms of the time and expertise of our staff.

For a discussion of our global economic impact and financial health, please see the Financial Health section, including a Focus on Asia, and more about our SUMURR project. You can also read more about our talent attraction strategy in the People section Case Study: A Comprehensive Talent Management Strategy in Asia-Pacific.