Ford cuts platform count to five to save $35 billion

Ford has announced it plans to slash $25.5 billion ($A35b) in costs within just five years by transitioning from the car-maker's nine modular global vehicle platforms to just five.

Announcing the plans during a presentation last week in New York, Ford's head of product development and purchasing, Hau Thai-Tang, confirmed the US car giant's controversial One Ford program that saw the platform count radically reduce from 30 to nine will go even further to reduce the billions spent on R&D.

According to Thai-Tang the move to just five global platforms would both save costs and boost efficiency, and that up to 70 per cent of a vehicle's value could be managed by this more modular approach.

In the future, the Ford product boss said that the five platforms would consist of a commercial van unibody; a rear-wheel drive/all-wheel drive body-on-frame; a front/all-wheel drive unibody; rear/all-wheel drive unibody; and a specific unibody platform dedicated for pure-electric vehicles.

As well as reducing platform development costs, around $7 billion ($A9.6b) would be saved in engineering while the time involved in taking a new vehicle from sketch to showroom will be reduced by 20 per cent, said Ford.

Meanwhile, new processes introduced with the greater platform sharing will increase engineering efficiency from 20 to 40 per cent.

In the US market, Ford has already shifted its focus from cars to pick-ups, helping it significantly reduce costs further while boosting profit.

Thai-Tang said Ford would phase out traditional sedans altogether in North America and replace them with new vehicles with different body styles that will be priced similarly to the models they replace.

The senior Ford exec said that, in the future, the US car-maker will focus on "bold, emotive designs" for the vehicles it creates for the pick-up, commercial van and utility segments.