After a day of speculation, automaker Ford has announced a significant regime change to underscore its ambitions in connected and self-driving cars: Jim Hackett — who had been running Ford’s Smart Mobility business — is taking over as the company’s CEO, replacing Mark Fields, who is retiring.
The move is a bold attempt to push Ford into what many see as the next generation of auto-making. This is an area Ford has been criticised for not attacking as well as competitors like GM (which has invested in and works with companies like Lyft, acquired startups like Cruise, and started new initiatives like car-sharing service Maven); and upstarts like Tesla — never mind the likes of Google and Uber. Ford’s stock price, which is lingering around $11 at the moment, is significantly down from lofty heights of $36, which it hit in 1999-2000, right before a huge downturn.
It is therefore no surprise that during a press conference announcing the news today, Chairman Bill Ford compared Hackett several times to Alan Mulally, who was Ford’s CEO from 2006 to 2014 and helped bring Ford out of its last slump and back into profitability.