(Image/Ford Motor Co.)
Ford Motor Co. fired CEO Mark Fields and replaced him with Jim Hackett, who spent the past year serving as chairman of Ford’s Smart Mobility division, according to a New York Times report.
Fields, 56, became CEO of the #2 U.S. automaker in mid-2014. Since then, the company’s stock price has plummeted 40 percent. Last week, Fields cut 1,400 salaried jobs from Ford’s payroll.
Fields has come “under fire from investor and the company’s board for failing to expand the company’s core auto business and for lagging in developing the high-tech cars of the future,” the New York Times story said.
Jim Hackett will be Ford’s new CEO. (Image/Ford)
The Ford subsidiary Hackett managed is the one developing driverless vehicle technology. Prior to joining Ford in 2016, Hackett, 62, was the longtime CEO of Grand Rapids, MI-based office furniture company Steelcase.
“Despite spending heavily on self-driving research, Ford was struggling to keep pace with larger automakers such as General Motors and tech giants like Google, both of which have been testing self-driving vehicles,” the Times story said.
Ford officials have promised to have a fully autonomous vehicle on the roads by 2021.
Tesla Motor Co., which makes exclusively electric vehicles, is bringing a mass-market driverless vehicle to market this year.
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