I think the as someone said, when you think ford you don't think hybrid even if it is well designed. You think mustang and f150 and those people aren't looking at hybrids. And hybrid people are looking at Prius not Ford. C-max is a product that didn't reach it's intended market.
The Chevy volt suffered a similar fate. Everything I read says it's a well engineered reliable vehicle, but the Chevy folks didn't jump on that in mass.
And the poor Nissan leaf. . . . I see many golf carts for sale for more than Nissan leafs are going for atm. Shit - I'd just yank the doors off and use that for a fancy golf cart with better range lol . And street legal.
Ford in particular has produced a lot of crappy cars over the years, so maybe the question should be "Why are Fords so cheap?". Look at what happened to buyers of the Ford Fiesta and Ford Focus between 2011 and 2016:
https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/2019/10/28/ford-investigation-out-of-gear/2166912001/The truth is, Ford has been producing poor-quality transmissions for decades. The reason the Pinto burst into flames in the 1970s was twofold: first the design of the gas tank, second that the transmission would quit in the middle of the highway, leading to lots of rear-end collisions.
In general, their sedans are bought by fleets and by people who only plan to keep their new car a couple of years. They also rope in a lot of customers who don't know much about how to obtain automotive reliability information and think a car is a car.
Hybrids and BEVs tend to be bought by people who dive deep into doing their homework. Plus, people who are shopping for hybrids/BEVs now were shopping for economy cars like the Focus in the past, and had friends doing the same. What they found caused Ford to be crossed off their list.
If the CMax appears to be a decent quality vehicle, it may be because Ford had to go around some of their existing vendors and engineers to build it as a one-off low volume item. Persistent quality problems
ALWAYS reflect deeper problems with leadership, incentives, and internal politics. So as Ford moves toward electrification, expect the same underlying issues to cause quality lapses. Consumers will remain reluctant to buy relatively new propulsion tech from a company that still hasn't mastered the ICE transmission, especially when they get to experience the vehicle at an age of 10 years or so.
Similarly, GM is notorious for bad electronics across multiple decades of vehicles. A friend of mine is on his 3rd alternator, has had to replace numerous switches and sensors, and has been to the dealer for dashboard lights multiple times. How do we feel about buying and electric vehicle from a company we know is bad at electronics? Sure enough...
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/recall-all-chevy-bolt-vehicles-fire-riskYou know who's good at electronics? Silicon Valley. Hence the frenzy for Teslas, despite their relative lack of experience building cars. People will take a chance on a used Tesla because they don't personally know people left stranded or with four-figure repair bills by them.
