The New Yorker - USA (2022-01-31)

(Antfer) #1

46 THENEWYORKER,JANUARY31, 2022


$27,500, an incredible deal. But the added
incentive doesn’t really address the inev-
itability of autoworkers’ jobs becoming
increasingly automated.
Only a fraction of Ford’s total U.S.
workforce of around eighty-six thou-
sand will work at the Rouge E.V. Cen-
ter. The old Rouge employed a hundred
thousand workers, and the gas-F-150
plant, across the tarmac, where a new
truck rolls off the line every fifty-three
seconds, employs four thousand work-
ers. (Ford has announced plans to add
nine hundred and fifty new jobs to keep
up with demand for the Lightning and
its hybrid F-150 model.) Williams, who
gave President Biden a tour when Ford
débuted the electric truck, last May, ex-
plained that computer vision enhances
the visual inspection of the vehicles that
humans conduct, but with greater ob-
jectivity. Cobots—collaborative robots—
check all the wiring and the fluid con-
nections before the cab and the bed go
on the chassis.
We came to the largest of the robots,
a Fanuc M-2000iA, which can lift a ve-
hicle frame at least thirteen feet into the
air. The robot deftly picked up the truck’s
eighteen-hundred-pound Korean-made
lithium-ion battery, which looked like a
rooftop cargo-carrying case. The rein-
forced high-strength plastic shell con-
tained hundreds of AA-battery-size cells
filled with chemicals. The Fanuc placed
the battery on the truck’s chassis, and
the skillet floated farther down the line.


T


he electrification of Ford’s fleet isn’t
the most challenging task that the
company faces. As Jim Farley explained
after my Rouge tour, “This industry is
overly focussed on the propulsion change.
But the real change is that we are mov-
ing to a software-defined experience for
our customers.” That experience will
gradually replace what drivers do now,
until Ford’s fleet becomes fully autono-
mous, at some point years from now.
“Can we sleep in our cars?” Farley asked,
in a way that suggested the answer will
be yes. “Can we use them as business
places, so we leave for work an hour
later?” Again, yes. “Then the drive to-
tally changes.”
Farley’s maternal grandfather, Emmet
Tracy, worked for Henry Ford in the
foundry at the original Rouge—“An awful
job,” his grandson said. Farley, who grew


up around the world (his father was in
Citibank’s international division), started
his automotive career at Toyota, in 1990,
where he worked as a marketing execu-
tive, helping to bring out the RAV4, Toy-
ota’s compact S.U.V., and leading its lux-
ury line, Lexus. Farley’s choice strained
his relationship with his grandfather. By
the time Farley joined Ford, in 2007, his
grandfather was dead. He became the
C.E.O. in 2020. Like Darren Palmer,
Farley likes to race Cobras. He is a cousin
of Chris Farley, the late comedian.
Farley pointed to the recent history
of the mobile phone as “the most powerful
proxy for what we are going through.”
In 2007, he went on, “three of the big-
gest mobile-phone-makers were Black-
Berry, Nokia, and Motorola.” A few years
later, Apple- and Google-made mobile
devices took over, and they were much

more than telephones. “And the most
important thing was that the software
decided what kind of hardware got put
on those machines,” Farley added. When
it came to the device business, hard-
ware-centric companies had given way
to software-first ones, and the customer
experience was defined by the embed-
ded operating system.
Ford is at that juncture now. The auto-
maker must come up with a vehicular
version of Apple’s iOS for this soft-
ware-first world in which Ford has very
little experience. Historically, the com-
pany has outsourced electronics and soft-
ware, and while the communication tem-
plate is largely standardized, each supplier
uses it differently. “We delegated our
electrical systems and software to twenty
suppliers,” Farley told me, “and differ-
ent parts of the car can’t speak to each

CAPRAAEGAGRUS HIRCUS


No one knew the reason the town goat
followed the flower vender around town
until someone found piles of damp petals
along the routes the flower vender took.

All the kinfolk of the goat had long
become food. Their bones & muscles
had been used for tools & weapons.
Mannish water, a popular goat stew,

was made from the feet, intestines
& testicles of some goats. Cashmere
came from the undercoat of superfine
fibres on the underbelly of other goats.

Because the goat is one of the oldest
domesticated animals, it was one of the first
to be sacrificed in rituals, cooked in a hole
of fire, thrown off the side of a mountain.

Our goat followed the vender around town
dragging chains anytime there was a death
& dragging bells anytime a child was born.
The goat had no name. Or each of us called it

a different name, but when we draped its horns
in wreathes of fruit and flowers at harvesttime,
we called it Cornucopious the Goat. Dionysus
spent his childhood disguised as a goat

under Zeus’ protection, but he went mad
when he was turned back into a human.
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