Ford Motor Co. announced today that it plans to invest 1 billion pounds ($1.84 billion) in Britain within six years to develop a range of global environmental technologies in the UK for its Ford, Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo brands. This engineering program doubles the rate of environmental spending in the past and is part of a broad strategy for the company’s Ford of Europe and PAG business units that will deliver an extensive list and variety of technologies including lightweight, hybrid electric, and bio-fuel vehicles.
"We are not going to introduce just one or two high-profile green cars that sell in relatively low numbers and leave it at that. To tackle this issue, we are getting our 3,700 R&D people in Essex, our 2,000 engineers in Coventry and our 3,300 engineers in Warwickshire to work together,” said Ford of Europe and Premier Automotive Group Chairman and CEO Lewis Booth.
Booth continued: “By pooling our engineering investment, our brands will develop a broader range of technologies, available faster than they could afford individually. And by deploying these technologies across the breadth of our product range – mass market and premium products, passenger cars and commercial vehicles – we can deliver far more significant reductions in the total amount of CO 2 generated by our total vehicle fleet. We can also help reduce our customers' consumption of fossil fuels, which saves them money."