1294 Main Street
San Francisco, California
Ford Motor Company
Attn: Mark Fields
4186 American Road
Dearborn, Michigan
Dear Mr. Mark Fields,
I have been recently studied your company’s corporate social responsibility program focused on environmental sustainability practices, with the purpose on reducing the impact of the automotive use on the water, land, air, humans’ lives, fauna and flora. I am happy to see that Ford is an ambassador of the environmental sustainability, already approaching green technologies and scientific efforts for reducing the greenhouse emissions and other forms of pollution that affect the environment.
As a concerned citizen, an informed environmentalist client, and a business strategist, I would like to address to you my belief that there is still much more that you can do in this direction. Ford is a leader of the automotive industry and developing sustainable trends is among its business objectives for people to associate the company with an environmental friendly automotive player. Not only does Ford possess the capacity to induce change and to develop sustainable trends through its mixed teams formed of scientists and Ford tech employees, but it also has the financial potential to support the change towards a more eco-friendly automobile industry.
Ford’s environmental sustainability plans include developing an advanced hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology based on water and heat emission without generating pollution or negatively impacting the environment. (Ford CSR, “Improving Fuel Economy”). The impediment of increasing this technology is that there are currently only a few gas stations that are equipped with the hydrogen gas pump technology. This is one reason for which the production and the marketization of such vehicles is limited at the moment.
Investing in green energy is not only beneficial for your company’s reputation and brand awareness as an ambassador of the environmental sustainability, it is also a necessity. In the current economy, people around the globe are dependent on oil and the big oil and gas companies are exploiting this situation. As a result, the volatile prices of oil affect states’ economies and influence or produce economic instabilities and even financial crisis at national level, as they impact the price of other commodities. This situation is already created, and it already impacts the automobile drivers, who may search for additional ways to travel, including replacing their personal cars for the public transportation, bicycles or walking. Further on, this situation can also lead to consumers purchasing less automobiles, considering that they will not afford the oil and gas price, which continues to increase. By investing in green automobile technology, you will invest in the future of Ford. You will be building an alternative to gas and oil and will stimulate the economy, not to mention the fact that you will be contributing to significantly minimizing the pollution.
Creating new vehicles with integrated green technology is an effective solution of addressing the future challenges in terms of greenhouse emissions and oil fluctuation for the new car owners. However, it will not address the situation of the automobile owners whose vehicles are dependent on fossil fuels, which will continue to pollute the atmosphere, lands, water and air through their emissions. For answering this situation, an adaptation needs to be implemented to the vehicles already in function, built under older technologies. Ford could design and patent an adaptive technology, an adaptive engine that could be integrated in the automobile’s mechanics at a later stage.
This technology could be available both for Ford automobiles, but also for non-Ford automobiles, with the condition that the system can be integrated safely for the driver, other road participants and the environment. Tests should be driven for the implementation of such systems. Again, Ford will increase its reputation as a sustainable automobile brand, strategically positioning in the automobile components market as a pro-environmental player and a trend-setter in its industry, serving its competitors with its invention. This technology, of converting existing vehicles into green vehicles already exist, as small companies are assuring the transition from normal vehicles to electric vehicles, by changing the automobile’s drive-train.
For sure, Mr. Fields, you are aware of these innovations and of many others that exist in the automobile industry and you may probably even develop something similar. The point that I am trying to make is that car owners would be thrilled to have this alternative, of adjusting their vehicles for using green fuels instead of oil and gas to aliment their vehicles. In addition, unlike small companies that are trying to develop such technologies and do not have the financial potential to sustain it, for you, going into this direction would only mean enlarging your research and development practices by sponsoring a new scientific program. As Ford’s CEO, aware of the business environment and its existent strategies, you could also considering acquiring such companies that already developed this technology, but had not the financial capacities of sustaining their business. You would have the advantages of taking on the existent know-how and perfect it within your plants, to heavily promote it and to place it on the market, choosing the positioning you desire.
While working on improving, adjusting or replacing the older technology with the green technology or making the vehicles more environmentally sustainable, car producers have the governments’ support in promoting and facilitating research in this direction. As such, Ford will benefit of a reputable partner – the Government of United States. This business and innovative union will be also a symbolic partnership between two strong, independent, innovator and breakthrough parties.
Moreover, after the technology will be tested and implemented in United States, it could be further licensed to other countries, under Ford’s aegis. On one side, developing systems for changing, improving and adjusting the existent vehicles into green technologies would represent an improvement for the environment, which will become a significant improvement in time, as this would be a sustainable measure. The many existing vehicles are adjusted to electric or any other green technology, the greater the positive impact on the environment, through the reduction of the greenhouse emissions. However, although it would require a great investment, this strategy will be a major improvement in time, not immediately. On the other side, this technology would imply an immediate game changer strategy for Ford. Entering on the market of adjusting existent vehicles with green technology would only influence other competitive companies to follow Ford’s leads. However, this strategy should not be perceived as a competitive one, since it occurs with and under Government’s supervision. Other companies need to be encouraged to follow Ford’s steps, working together to perfect and promote the advantages of adjusting existing vehicles to electric and other green technologies.
Because many of the automobile producers have international plants, their business know-how follow them in each of their locations and soon other markets will benefit of this technology. Technology transfer or internalization of technology, regardless of these strategies the fact would be that with Ford’s entrance in the market of adjusting existing vehicles into electric and other green energy technology, the world would move faster into an effective environmental sustainability.
I am hoping that my letter will soon find echoes in your business strategies and in your short and long-term investment objectives for a greener society. I would be very happy to receive an answer to my letter. Here is my address, where you can reply to me: 1294 Main Street,
San Francisco, California.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Exhibit
Bibliography
Berger, Roland Strategy Consultants. “Green Growth, Green Profit: How Green Transformation Boosts Business”. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
California Energy Commission. “California Investing Nearly $50 Million in Hydrogen Refueling Stations”. California Gov. Accessed 19 November 2014. http://www.energy.ca.gov/releases/2014_releases/2014-05 01_hydrogen_refueling_stations_funding_awards_nr.html. n.d.
Edenhofer, Ottmar, Pichs-Madruga, Ramon & Sokona, Youba. “Special Repor on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation”. (ntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2012.
Ford. “Sustainability 2012/2013” Ford. Accessed 19 November 2014. http://corporate.ford.com/microsites/sustainability-report-2012-13/environment-products-plan-economy.
Jerew, Benji. “AMP Electric Vehicles Adjusting Their Focus from Conversions to Fleets”. The Green Optimistic. 2012. Accessed 19 November 2014. http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2012/10/23/amp-electric-vehicles-adjusting-their-focus-from-conversions-to-fleets/#.VGzJCcmIWZE.
Kam, Eric. “Sustainability and the Automotive Industry”. Five Minutes to Midnight. Accessed 19 November 2014. http://www.11-55.org/issues3/issue.php?iss=51&art=51.5.
United Nations. “World Economic and Social Survey 2011. The Great Green Technological Transformation”. United Nations, vol. 50, no. 1. 2011.
