Ecosport has been received very positively in Europe and the company only sells the top trim level of the car on this market, said Roelant de Waard, vice-president, marketing, sales and service Ford of Europe. This vehicle is not a competitor for Dacia Duster, but rather competes with Opel Mokka, Nissan Juke and Renault Captur, he added.
“[If and when we’ll manufacture it in Europe] I won’t comment on that but when volumes increase, there obviously comes the question: ‘Should we produce it locally?’.”
Sources close to the plant in Craiova say the mark a model needs to overshoot before being assembled locally and not imported from another continent is 60,000 units. If sales of Ecosport go beyond that level, it could be assembled in Romania for Europe, as the plant in Craiova is the only one that could do it.
There are only two Ford plants in Europe making cars based on a B-segment platform. One of them is in Cologne, Germany, assembles Fiesta at capacity and has recently dropped the third shift after negotiations with the unions to cut costs, and the other is in Craiova. The Craiova plant has a capacity of 300,000 units a year, but assembled only 68,000 B-Max cars last year. The plant has had 69 days of production halt since September 2013 due to the decline in B-Max sales.
Ford stepped up engine production in Craiova, driving it to 180,000 units of the 1.0 liter and 1.5 liter Ecoboost engines. Production picked up in the first five months of the year, reaching a volume of about 135,000 units of the two engine versions.
The SUV segment is expected to see significant growth in Europe and in the world to a market share of 20% by 2018.
Sales of Ford SUVs will triple by 2018 from the 90,000 units of Ford Kuga sold last year. The difference up to 270,000 is “a combination of the three vehicles (Kuga, Edge and Ecosport i.e.),” Roelant de Waard said.
“Kuga will be by far the strongest and will grow to well over 100,000 (…) and the Ecosport will get to similar volumes like the Kuga.”
Ford received more than 16,000 orders for Ecosport in the first five months of the year, its officials said.
While Kuga was launched on the entire European market last year, Ecosport is only available on the main markets of the continent, such as France, UK, Germany and Spain, at the moment. It will be introduced on small markets, including Romania in 2015. Also in 2015, but in the fourth quarter, another SUV, Ford Edge, is due to arrive and compete with premium models like VW Touareg, Audi Q5 and even Q7.
“Europe is coming out of the recession so there will be more money in the market going forward. Customers don’t think that black and white (about buying an SUV from a manufacturer like Audi, VW and Volvo versus one from Ford on the other, i.e.), they just look at the product. On the Kuga, we get customers from all kinds of brands,” Roelant de Waard said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)