I agree with your line of thinking. They are absolutely married to that ball-and-chain for whatever amount of time it takes them to go all out.

It seems like the thing that helped American auto makers "bounce back" after things went extremely south before 2010 is also their biggest Achilles heel outside of being inherently gas-based vehicles: their choice to create entire lines of cars that's profitability hinged on the interchangeability and cross-model compatible frames and parts is also the reason they can't simply "re-tool" or redesign any of their models without completely scrapping the ideas and starting from scratch.

In a sense I almost feel like if these car companies decide to do as much they may have to entirely scrap previous car models and start anew. Imagine Ford saying goodbye to the F-150 / general truck models, the Mustangs, the Explorers. Chevy and Dodge saying goodbye to the cars and trucks they are able to sell to law enforcement, military, and government.

I really can't. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things but from my outside, rookie POV it seems like these are huge reasons due to the fact that their entire manufacturing supply line is reliant on this model that's helped them all but die off in competition to foreign auto makers.

Ford is scrapping selling cars in the American market. Only the Mustang and some Focus crossover variant will be sold. Maybe they are planning to come back with pure electric vehicles sold only at dealerships they own under a different sub-brand? Sort of like Saturn. One could hope that a legacy car company could take such a radical departure from their previous sales strategy, but who knows. It might even be illegal for Ford to open up their own dealerships for an all-electric brand near existing ones.

> Maybe they are planning to come back with pure electric vehicles sold only at dealerships they own under a different sub-brand? Sort of like Saturn.

They're betting their entire North American future on light trucks and SUVs.

That is what it looks like and what all the PR says. Definitely where their current profit margins are. I am just hoping that a company with such a long history of making great vehicles can make the transition to electric cars. This might be a possible pathway.

They tried but didn't get much market traction. They had the flex vehicles that could take different fuel mixtures, and they had a few hybrid cars, and eventually some battery cars but they were nothing compared to a tesla, and against leaf and volt never seem to get much market traction. The ford family person who lead the company tried a little bit but they could never seem to overcome the existing investment and exiting investment in designing ice cars.

sales people have no problem with cognitive dissonance, they do it all day for thousands of years now.

The question is not their ethics, it is whether their bosses would let them do it.