Ford Ranger PHEV built for choice not compliance, says exec
Ford Australia has launched the Ranger PHEV to broaden customer choice, not meet emissions regulations, according to senior global product executive Jim Baumbick.
The Ranger PHEV joins a growing collection of electrified Ford models in Australia that includes the all-electric Mustang Mach-E SUV and E-Transit and E-Transit Custom vans, as well as a plug-in hybrid version of the Transit Custom.
All will serve as key pillars of Ford's initial response to the New Vehicle Emissions Standard (NVES) in Australia, with sales of the greener vehicles set to help offset fines accrued by dirtier models in the lineup such as diesel versions of the Ranger and the Everest SUV, as well as the petrol-powered Mustang sports car.
However, Mr Baumbick says that Ford was working on diversifying its Ranger lineup well before the strict new emissions regulations were announced, and that the Ranger PHEV complements its other ute offerings.
Hundreds of new car deals are available through CarExpert right now. Get the experts on your side and score a great deal. Browse now. Supplied Credit: CarExpert
'This is not a compliance play, it's a portfolio of options,' Mr Baumbick told Australian media at the international launch of the Ranger PHEV.
'At Ford, we want to let the customers choose so they can pick the right tool for the job.
'The regulatory requirements in Australia have changed very rapidly, faster than normal process. But we already had this in development, and we'll continue to enhance the portfolio.
'We're launching it now, but we didn't do this because of the new requirements. It's part of our overall mission to offer a portfolio of options.'
Despite his insistence that the plug-in hybrid version of the Ranger wasn't an emissions-led project, Mr Baumbick admitted that Ford was caught on the back foot by tightening regulations across the globe. Supplied Credit: CarExpert
The ink officially dried on the Australian Government's New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) at the start of this year, bringing with it regulations designed to reduce the carbon footprint of the Australian car market. While the NVES came into effect on January 1, 2025, penalties won't start being accrued until July 1.
'Going electric isn't a light switch,' explained Mr Baumbick.
'We're trying to move as fast as we can, and when things change quickly there are development lead times, so stay tuned.
'It's going to be a portfolio of solutions over a longer arch of time. We're going to continue to improve the efficiency and emissions of our systems and a migration to hybrids over time will make a big contribution to the challenge of reducing emissions. EV will play a significant role, but it's got to be the right tool for the job.' Supplied Credit: CarExpert
As for the other measures Ford is set to take to survive in the Australian market, the brand is committed to shielding consumers from the financial burden of NVES fines.
'We're not jacking up prices due to our regulatory status,' Mr Baumbick asserted.
'As we always have, we continue to work on our broader mission to improve year over year. Every model is going to continue to improve.'
MORE: Explore the Ford Ranger showroom
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The Advertiser
an hour ago
- The Advertiser
Defence spending: the art of picking the moment to panic
The United States wants Australia to spend more on its armed forces. That's the way nations talk about these things. In everyday life, things are different. I don't make up my shopping list by noting down "spend more on chicken thighs": I want to buy a particular number of chicken thighs, the number the recipe calls for. The Albanese government is standing firm in the face of American pressure, sort of, saying that we'll spend more money on our armed forces because we want to, not because you want us to, so there! Which doesn't really resolve the question of how many chicken thighs we need. It's certainly true that we're facing unprecedented challenges. In his recent Quarterly Essay "Hard new world", independent defence analyst Hugh White points out that in the Trump era the American alliance is no longer worth the paper it was never printed on (the ANZUS treaty commits the parties only to "consult[ing] together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened" and to "act[ing] to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". White concludes that Australia must stand up for itself, cancel AUKUS, and carve out its own foreign policy. Despite his differences with the government, however, he still suggests that "Australia will need to spend a lot more on defence if it wishes to manage the risk of aggression by a great power like China in the decades ahead." Various commentators have pointed out that we already spend rather a lot on our armed forces, coming in at about 11th on world rankings of dollar expenditure - more than Israel, more than Taiwan. For their payments, Taiwan gets a parade ground salute from 1,837,800 uniforms and Israel gets 642,000 (including large reserve forces in both cases). We check in at 79,990, reserves included - notably fewer. Even those critics who don't think we need to spend more on our defence don't suggest we need to spend less, but it would surely be odd if we had purely by chance ended up exactly in the Goldilocks zone. There are hints that we could do rather better. Analysis prepared for the Greens by the parliamentary library and reported by the ABC revealed that "the ranks of senior officers in the Australian military [have] almost doubled over the past 20 years, despite a steady decline in overall numbers of enlisted defence personnel". 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Which doesn't really resolve the question of how many chicken thighs we need. It's certainly true that we're facing unprecedented challenges. In his recent Quarterly Essay "Hard new world", independent defence analyst Hugh White points out that in the Trump era the American alliance is no longer worth the paper it was never printed on (the ANZUS treaty commits the parties only to "consult[ing] together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened" and to "act[ing] to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". White concludes that Australia must stand up for itself, cancel AUKUS, and carve out its own foreign policy. Despite his differences with the government, however, he still suggests that "Australia will need to spend a lot more on defence if it wishes to manage the risk of aggression by a great power like China in the decades ahead." Various commentators have pointed out that we already spend rather a lot on our armed forces, coming in at about 11th on world rankings of dollar expenditure - more than Israel, more than Taiwan. For their payments, Taiwan gets a parade ground salute from 1,837,800 uniforms and Israel gets 642,000 (including large reserve forces in both cases). We check in at 79,990, reserves included - notably fewer. Even those critics who don't think we need to spend more on our defence don't suggest we need to spend less, but it would surely be odd if we had purely by chance ended up exactly in the Goldilocks zone. There are hints that we could do rather better. Analysis prepared for the Greens by the parliamentary library and reported by the ABC revealed that "the ranks of senior officers in the Australian military [have] almost doubled over the past 20 years, despite a steady decline in overall numbers of enlisted defence personnel". Critics - and some official reports - suggest "the Defence organisation is top- heavy, over-managed and under-led" (Michael Shoebridge, Strategic Analysis Australia) and "there are ... dangerous weaknesses in our defence capabilities" (Henry Ergas, in The Australian). Armed forces, though, are inherently difficult to manage efficiently. How do you measure the performance of an organisation that you hope is never going to be called upon to do what you would want it to be able to do? How, strategically, do you identify the threats that our forces are designed to combat, given that mentioning the names of these nations in public would move us appreciably closer to such conflicts? How, as a politician, do you cut back on the privileges of the generals without having them leak hostile reports to the media? Faced with these difficult problems, Australian ministers for defence tend to move on to another more compliant portfolio as soon as they can. Australian governments have historically retreated to arguing only about total spending, believing that the public can't cope with more than one number at a time. The other problem, of course, is productivity. Money spent on arms is, in economic terms, a dead end (although it could be said that our acquisition of warships supports our shipbuilding industry, or would, if we had one). There's not much spillover. Money invested almost anywhere else - education, research, infrastructure - would have a payoff down the track; adding more soldiers just withdraws resources from everywhere else and diminishes growth. READ MORE: The longer we can last before we arm up, the more resources we'll have when we need to. If Australia did believe that we were in actual danger of invasion, we would be spending on defence about what we spent in 1943, or 33 per cent of GDP, and we'd also be instituting conscription and rationing. The difference between 2 per cent and 33 per cent is a measure of how safe we feel when not specifically prompted to panic. The trick, of course, is picking the moment to panic. And one of the major tasks facing any Australian government is to make it absolutely clear when the answer is "not remotely yet". Our leaders are very, very bad at it. Then we need to talk about AI and its role in place of foot soldiers. That's a whole other debate. The United States wants Australia to spend more on its armed forces. That's the way nations talk about these things. In everyday life, things are different. I don't make up my shopping list by noting down "spend more on chicken thighs": I want to buy a particular number of chicken thighs, the number the recipe calls for. The Albanese government is standing firm in the face of American pressure, sort of, saying that we'll spend more money on our armed forces because we want to, not because you want us to, so there! Which doesn't really resolve the question of how many chicken thighs we need. It's certainly true that we're facing unprecedented challenges. In his recent Quarterly Essay "Hard new world", independent defence analyst Hugh White points out that in the Trump era the American alliance is no longer worth the paper it was never printed on (the ANZUS treaty commits the parties only to "consult[ing] together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened" and to "act[ing] to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". White concludes that Australia must stand up for itself, cancel AUKUS, and carve out its own foreign policy. Despite his differences with the government, however, he still suggests that "Australia will need to spend a lot more on defence if it wishes to manage the risk of aggression by a great power like China in the decades ahead." Various commentators have pointed out that we already spend rather a lot on our armed forces, coming in at about 11th on world rankings of dollar expenditure - more than Israel, more than Taiwan. For their payments, Taiwan gets a parade ground salute from 1,837,800 uniforms and Israel gets 642,000 (including large reserve forces in both cases). We check in at 79,990, reserves included - notably fewer. Even those critics who don't think we need to spend more on our defence don't suggest we need to spend less, but it would surely be odd if we had purely by chance ended up exactly in the Goldilocks zone. There are hints that we could do rather better. Analysis prepared for the Greens by the parliamentary library and reported by the ABC revealed that "the ranks of senior officers in the Australian military [have] almost doubled over the past 20 years, despite a steady decline in overall numbers of enlisted defence personnel". Critics - and some official reports - suggest "the Defence organisation is top- heavy, over-managed and under-led" (Michael Shoebridge, Strategic Analysis Australia) and "there are ... dangerous weaknesses in our defence capabilities" (Henry Ergas, in The Australian). Armed forces, though, are inherently difficult to manage efficiently. How do you measure the performance of an organisation that you hope is never going to be called upon to do what you would want it to be able to do? How, strategically, do you identify the threats that our forces are designed to combat, given that mentioning the names of these nations in public would move us appreciably closer to such conflicts? How, as a politician, do you cut back on the privileges of the generals without having them leak hostile reports to the media? Faced with these difficult problems, Australian ministers for defence tend to move on to another more compliant portfolio as soon as they can. Australian governments have historically retreated to arguing only about total spending, believing that the public can't cope with more than one number at a time. The other problem, of course, is productivity. Money spent on arms is, in economic terms, a dead end (although it could be said that our acquisition of warships supports our shipbuilding industry, or would, if we had one). There's not much spillover. Money invested almost anywhere else - education, research, infrastructure - would have a payoff down the track; adding more soldiers just withdraws resources from everywhere else and diminishes growth. READ MORE: The longer we can last before we arm up, the more resources we'll have when we need to. If Australia did believe that we were in actual danger of invasion, we would be spending on defence about what we spent in 1943, or 33 per cent of GDP, and we'd also be instituting conscription and rationing. The difference between 2 per cent and 33 per cent is a measure of how safe we feel when not specifically prompted to panic. The trick, of course, is picking the moment to panic. And one of the major tasks facing any Australian government is to make it absolutely clear when the answer is "not remotely yet". Our leaders are very, very bad at it. Then we need to talk about AI and its role in place of foot soldiers. That's a whole other debate. The United States wants Australia to spend more on its armed forces. That's the way nations talk about these things. In everyday life, things are different. I don't make up my shopping list by noting down "spend more on chicken thighs": I want to buy a particular number of chicken thighs, the number the recipe calls for. The Albanese government is standing firm in the face of American pressure, sort of, saying that we'll spend more money on our armed forces because we want to, not because you want us to, so there! Which doesn't really resolve the question of how many chicken thighs we need. It's certainly true that we're facing unprecedented challenges. In his recent Quarterly Essay "Hard new world", independent defence analyst Hugh White points out that in the Trump era the American alliance is no longer worth the paper it was never printed on (the ANZUS treaty commits the parties only to "consult[ing] together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened" and to "act[ing] to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes". White concludes that Australia must stand up for itself, cancel AUKUS, and carve out its own foreign policy. Despite his differences with the government, however, he still suggests that "Australia will need to spend a lot more on defence if it wishes to manage the risk of aggression by a great power like China in the decades ahead." Various commentators have pointed out that we already spend rather a lot on our armed forces, coming in at about 11th on world rankings of dollar expenditure - more than Israel, more than Taiwan. For their payments, Taiwan gets a parade ground salute from 1,837,800 uniforms and Israel gets 642,000 (including large reserve forces in both cases). We check in at 79,990, reserves included - notably fewer. Even those critics who don't think we need to spend more on our defence don't suggest we need to spend less, but it would surely be odd if we had purely by chance ended up exactly in the Goldilocks zone. There are hints that we could do rather better. Analysis prepared for the Greens by the parliamentary library and reported by the ABC revealed that "the ranks of senior officers in the Australian military [have] almost doubled over the past 20 years, despite a steady decline in overall numbers of enlisted defence personnel". Critics - and some official reports - suggest "the Defence organisation is top- heavy, over-managed and under-led" (Michael Shoebridge, Strategic Analysis Australia) and "there are ... dangerous weaknesses in our defence capabilities" (Henry Ergas, in The Australian). Armed forces, though, are inherently difficult to manage efficiently. How do you measure the performance of an organisation that you hope is never going to be called upon to do what you would want it to be able to do? How, strategically, do you identify the threats that our forces are designed to combat, given that mentioning the names of these nations in public would move us appreciably closer to such conflicts? How, as a politician, do you cut back on the privileges of the generals without having them leak hostile reports to the media? Faced with these difficult problems, Australian ministers for defence tend to move on to another more compliant portfolio as soon as they can. Australian governments have historically retreated to arguing only about total spending, believing that the public can't cope with more than one number at a time. The other problem, of course, is productivity. Money spent on arms is, in economic terms, a dead end (although it could be said that our acquisition of warships supports our shipbuilding industry, or would, if we had one). There's not much spillover. Money invested almost anywhere else - education, research, infrastructure - would have a payoff down the track; adding more soldiers just withdraws resources from everywhere else and diminishes growth. READ MORE: The longer we can last before we arm up, the more resources we'll have when we need to. If Australia did believe that we were in actual danger of invasion, we would be spending on defence about what we spent in 1943, or 33 per cent of GDP, and we'd also be instituting conscription and rationing. The difference between 2 per cent and 33 per cent is a measure of how safe we feel when not specifically prompted to panic. The trick, of course, is picking the moment to panic. And one of the major tasks facing any Australian government is to make it absolutely clear when the answer is "not remotely yet". Our leaders are very, very bad at it. Then we need to talk about AI and its role in place of foot soldiers. That's a whole other debate.
The Advertiser
an hour ago
- The Advertiser
Stan Sport buys rights to air English Premier League
English Premier League and FA Cup games will be shown on Stan Sport after the streaming service bought the broadcast rights in a $20 million deal. Optus Sport has broadcast games from one of the world's biggest soccer leagues for the past nine years in Australia but will shut down on August 1 following the buyout. Stan Sport, which is owned by Nine, will begin streaming content from the 2025-26 season in August. Stan is paying Optus Sport an upfront fee of $20 million and making a contribution toward the first payment for the next Premier League rights cycle. "This marks a step change in Nine's digital growth strategy," Nine CEO Matt Stanton said. "The Premier League is the most-watched football league on the planet and alongside the Emirates FA Cup, this acquisition reinforces Nine's position as the home of sport in Australia. "We are proud to deliver these iconic competitions to Australian audiences." The agreement includes the rights to Japan's and the US National Women's Soccer League. Nine said it would communicate with Optus Sport customers to ensure a seamless transition to Stan Sport. "It's the end of an unforgettable era here at Optus Sport we are excited for the future of football in Australia," Optus Sport said on its website. English Premier League and FA Cup games will be shown on Stan Sport after the streaming service bought the broadcast rights in a $20 million deal. Optus Sport has broadcast games from one of the world's biggest soccer leagues for the past nine years in Australia but will shut down on August 1 following the buyout. Stan Sport, which is owned by Nine, will begin streaming content from the 2025-26 season in August. Stan is paying Optus Sport an upfront fee of $20 million and making a contribution toward the first payment for the next Premier League rights cycle. "This marks a step change in Nine's digital growth strategy," Nine CEO Matt Stanton said. "The Premier League is the most-watched football league on the planet and alongside the Emirates FA Cup, this acquisition reinforces Nine's position as the home of sport in Australia. "We are proud to deliver these iconic competitions to Australian audiences." The agreement includes the rights to Japan's and the US National Women's Soccer League. Nine said it would communicate with Optus Sport customers to ensure a seamless transition to Stan Sport. "It's the end of an unforgettable era here at Optus Sport we are excited for the future of football in Australia," Optus Sport said on its website. English Premier League and FA Cup games will be shown on Stan Sport after the streaming service bought the broadcast rights in a $20 million deal. Optus Sport has broadcast games from one of the world's biggest soccer leagues for the past nine years in Australia but will shut down on August 1 following the buyout. Stan Sport, which is owned by Nine, will begin streaming content from the 2025-26 season in August. Stan is paying Optus Sport an upfront fee of $20 million and making a contribution toward the first payment for the next Premier League rights cycle. "This marks a step change in Nine's digital growth strategy," Nine CEO Matt Stanton said. "The Premier League is the most-watched football league on the planet and alongside the Emirates FA Cup, this acquisition reinforces Nine's position as the home of sport in Australia. "We are proud to deliver these iconic competitions to Australian audiences." The agreement includes the rights to Japan's and the US National Women's Soccer League. Nine said it would communicate with Optus Sport customers to ensure a seamless transition to Stan Sport. "It's the end of an unforgettable era here at Optus Sport we are excited for the future of football in Australia," Optus Sport said on its website. English Premier League and FA Cup games will be shown on Stan Sport after the streaming service bought the broadcast rights in a $20 million deal. Optus Sport has broadcast games from one of the world's biggest soccer leagues for the past nine years in Australia but will shut down on August 1 following the buyout. Stan Sport, which is owned by Nine, will begin streaming content from the 2025-26 season in August. Stan is paying Optus Sport an upfront fee of $20 million and making a contribution toward the first payment for the next Premier League rights cycle. "This marks a step change in Nine's digital growth strategy," Nine CEO Matt Stanton said. "The Premier League is the most-watched football league on the planet and alongside the Emirates FA Cup, this acquisition reinforces Nine's position as the home of sport in Australia. "We are proud to deliver these iconic competitions to Australian audiences." The agreement includes the rights to Japan's and the US National Women's Soccer League. Nine said it would communicate with Optus Sport customers to ensure a seamless transition to Stan Sport. "It's the end of an unforgettable era here at Optus Sport we are excited for the future of football in Australia," Optus Sport said on its website.
