Paul Wraith on the Design Business (Podcast)

The car looks great. It's capabilities as an off road sports utility vehicle are just astonishing. They've managed to bring in the base version under thirty thousand dollars. I don't want to sound like I'm doing a commercial for Ford, and I'm a car guy, not a truck guy, but I have to tell you I'm really impressed with the way the truck came out. No impressed that I managed to track Paul down at Ford and say, hey, come on the show and let's talk about the process of

creating a brand new vehicle like this. I found our conversation absolutely fascinating and I think you will also so with no further Ado. My conversation with the chief designer at Ford, Paul Raith, via is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is Paul Raith. He is the chief designer for the brand new Ford Bronco. Previously, he was chief designer for Ford. He earned his master's degree in vehicle design from the

Royal College of Art. Paul Raith, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thanks for having me. So let's start with the Bronco briefly, congratulations or in order. As soon as you guys announced reservations for the first edition, the truck sold out overnight. We're going to spend more time talking about the Bronco. But let's talk a little bit about your career. What sort of path does one have to go on to

become a card designer. I think myself and all of my friends who are car designers and colleagues, I think we all have this little infatuation with the car or the truck from to the year dot, you know. I think typically our first words were probably car um and then we would have been the little kids in the back of the classroom somewhere scribbling pictures of cars into into our textbooks when we were at school. UM And

it's sort of stuck with us. Really, it's a it's a sort of compulsion, and unfortunately some of us are able to get places in design school to develop our skills through degrees and master's degrees. Um. And then some of us, on top of that are then lucky enough to get positions in the industry and do what we were doing as children as a as a day job, which is well, it's amazing, really great fun. So you've been with Forward for about twenty years. In you were

appointed chief designer for Ford. Tell us what that role en campuses in chief design I means essentially, I've got more toys to play with. Um. I have a lot of team around me of a very very talented people. Um. And it's a it's a better positions one to news your your point of view and your experience to apply to across a much more broad body of work. UM. And it's you know, it's an exciting challenge and it's

a huge responsibility as well. UM And I you know, you bring with you your your prior experience, you bring with you your sort of formative ideas and wide eyes because you're always taking stuff in and you know your ears tuned in too to listen to everything that you're being told. And then somehow or other, you know you you're blessed by having a fantastic group of people to

work with U. And then we do our best. We work like we work really hard, and we push like hell, and we we produce what we hope will be compelling future vehicles. Quite interesting. I have to imagine you are thinking about different regions of the world differently. How do consumer preferences vary from either North America to Europe or for either of those western countries to a place like China. How does that fit into the entire design process. It's

a fundamental building block. I mean, vehicles are are owned and used by people, and everyone's different, and people's can be culturally different by region, and also the circumstances the situation that they're in can be very different as well. In the US, we've got a road system that speaks really being framed around the vehicle. Go to Europe and

it's it's been framed around box. You know, in sort of medieval area, people moving livestock around the sort of wild landscape so um, you know, the road is smaller and much more complicated. The city centers are a very intense it's a very different situations they're here. So once you know and the people are living those environments as well, they have different needs and aspirations. Their circumstances are very different as well, so they may not have a garage

stark and vehicle in at all. So you need to get into the into the skin of the people that you're designing for and as much as you possibly can sort of see the world through their eyes. And I think once you start to do that, the output in your work naturally sort of changes. Um. And it's a really you know, learning is terrific fund um, and experimenting is great fun. And putting your ideas out there to sort of test and stress testament is also interesting. You know.

It can be disappointed sometimes when you when you've got to but it can also be really energizing when when you when you seek you're onto something which is new. Um. And from those kind of insights, we we we hope to design more relevant products that move the topic the subject of cars forwards. So that's consumer desires. What about the enthusiast crowd. Do you pay much intention to social media, the press and then the hardcore enthusiasts community, how do

they impact the design and marketing of cars? I would say first of all that I was sold a long time ago that designers are like information filters. We just we just draw in this wild pile information. We sort of push it through our brains and somehow it falls out of that of our hands and our pens with in a form of cars that we're like, we're just filtering all this information all the time. Part of that,

of course, is what we see in the press. So what we read social media players a really big part on it. UM. And then you wanted to get the the unsort of setter words of the of the user. And so it's great when you've got an enthusiast space to tap into. And we were really lucky with Bonco that we had that. So we spent a lot of time you know, reading, watching, listening, spending time with going

to places, you know, using the internet. UM, and that was that was a sort of that wasn't a thing that we did now and again that was something that was happening constantly. UM. We were sharing as a team on the Bonco program insights and observations and images and quotes from from social media from the time that we got up in the morning until the time we were going to go to bed amongst the team, whether the word we were sharing via text or email or or Instagram.

It's kind of a popular means of communication for us as well, So it's really important. Um and so nobody knows products better than the enthusiast, so you know, it's good to learn from from them and then trying to apply it into our into our future visions as well. We can't be constrained by it, of course, we can't just do what they know that they want. We need to also trying to stretch the topic further out so

that we're always making progress. Quite fascinating. So I'm an enthusiast, I have a Gebrubican, and I'm kind of a fan of some of the older Toyota f js and Ford Broncos and land Rover Defender nineties and all of these have just gone crazy in the collector market. So the question I have for you, what took so long to bring out a new Bronco, Well, that's a very good question.

I think you're right I think we've seen a shift in the in the in the classic car market is playing a lot of it each in to the vehicles that you've just listed. I think we are seeing a shift in there in the sort of public's ambitions for the sort of off road vehicles that they want um and I think there's there's going to be a lot of growth in the rugged SUV space, and the Bronco

is really well primed for that. So I think it's a little bit of serendipity, if you like, in a way that the stars are aligned in just the right way to open the door for Bronco. But the Bronco has never gone away in the minds of the four team. I'm sure there are people have been working on opportunities to try and get it back for for a long time.

But the circumstances have to be right. And it isn't just a question of someone like me doodling pictures of of a cool looking Bronco and hoping that that that would be enough to sort of kick the program off before I get to pick my pencil up. There isn't.

There's an awful lot of work with some super sharp people who take on the colossal undertaking of trying to take all of the parts that they know might exist that would help form the vehicle that the engine, the platform or the wheels, electronics, the safety systems and so on. Overlay that against the legislative list of framework that will drop the vehicle into the amount of investment required to to set a vehicle up, the amount of resources that

we have available, human and financial. You know, is there a factory in the right place at the right time, with the right capacity. There is a sort of miasma of variables, and if you can get all those sort of all those things to align and then you see an opportunity for for a segment of the market that's not really saturated, that has a lot of growth potential,

then then then it works. And then I guess we're just really happy that, you know, the stars aligns in the right way this time such that the the overall product development team afford are able to get their teeth into this thing and do a really good job. There's a lot of passion behind the scenes to try and make it work, and you know, and I think it's well known that there've been a couple of runs at it in the past but in the past maybe the

situation wasn't quite right. Thankfully, and here we are it clearly was right this time. It was pretty obvious to me that your bogey was the jeep Wrangler. They've kind of had that market all to themselves for a long time. How close do you guys think you came to hitting the mark of what's going to be your most direct competition, the jeep Wrangler. I think whenever you launched the vehicle, there's almost certainly going to be something out there. It

was a bit like it. Um. It's sometimes it can be a bit of a difficulty when when there's your segment composes of basically one vehicle, because that can become too much of an influence. So what I think it did for us is it redoubled our focus on just doing what was right for for us, for the Bronco as a brand, for its legacy, and for the users as well. Of course, we look at competitive vehicles for good and but you know, we want to poke holes and then we want to see what they're doing wrong

to see if we can do it better. We want to look at what they're doing right and learn from that as well. But we didn't just six about one other vehicle we looked very badly. Fact as well in our on our benchmarking was as as why wide as side by side UTVs? You know there are road registered all the way over to the marine industry products and steamboats. So yeah, we didn't. I don't think we really spent a lot of time really thinking that one vehicle, how

can we be like it? We use it as a as a measure that really our focuses about what we thought we needed to do. Quite interesting. I really love the thirty five in tires and the nearly foot high ground clearance. What are some of your favorite design elements from the new Bronco. You know, that's a really difficult question because you're so invested in all of it. I mean, some of these favorite elements would be the ones that you felt you have to hide, you know, push for

in the greatest sort of vigor. Other things are just ideas that I think just seem to make a lot of sense and are a bit unusual. Um. I really love I really love the Bronco bolt. Actually, I love the fact that we have a bolt with Bronco smashed into its head. Um. Wherever you see one of those

on the vehicle. It's an invitation for you to get the tool whut and get involved with the vehicle and undo those bolts and take that part off and either put another one in its place, or it's an opportunity for the answer market to come in and do something kind of exciting and creative and interesting. I think that's a really interesting part because generally, you know, in the contemporary automobile industry, we tend to want to not have

exposed bolts all over our vehicles. We like this sort of I should finish everything's very discreet and very crafted. We sort of took completely the opposite attack at the same time is we were coming up with that initial idea, we discovered that actually the the that Forward produced willis cheeks during the Second World War. But what stand keeps the forward produced vehicles different to the others is that each should have bolts on the Forward produced cheap have

an f bashed into their head. So we thought there was kind of a nice nod in the wink back to the history. I love that part. I think I also really love the the trial sites on the on the leading edge of the front fenders. The original Bronco

had Peo called peaked fenders. It was a real nice piece of styling, but it was it was also very practical because when you sit behind the wheel of an early Bronco, you sort of see these peaks and it tells you exactly where the corner of the vehicle in the front corner of the vehicles, so it helps you position the vehicle very well. It's it's just a it's a nice, attractive, iconic piece of very small product designs.

So we decided we would follow the same path. So we have peaks and offenders, but on top of that or you know, piercing offenders. In fact, we have these things called trail side, so they're like separate parts which you can bolt things to strap things through and also

use as a visual guide to the corners. I really like those because they actually solve some I think, some problems that we're all and count them down again when we're trying to tie things off to the front of our vehicle with ropes running over the hood and the headlights. And they offer up an opportunity for the aftermarket and the public to get involved funagling original solutions to fit

their very specific need. You know, we don't know what they are, all those needs and will be and we don't know what the solutions will be, but we've set the vehicle up in in that area to provide a good platform for them to to to do what they need to do to make the vehicle their vehicle. Just make sure no one tries to pull the truck out of the mud with those they have like a hundred and fifty pound capacity. That is not where the winch goes. And I hope nobody makes that mistake. So what sort

of additions did you consider? But ultimately decide that's just way too impractical, and you have a lot of really interesting things that I imagine we're hard to get past upper management. What was just a bridge too far? Well, the cutting room floor is very deep of broken dreams

in the car industry. That is the case always, but maybe in this case where we have to lose a fewer ideas because the vehicle that we've we're producing the Bronco we're talking about less than more than the Bronco Sport, but the it has a degree of modularity, so you can do things with a vehicle which you couldn't do with an escape or an explorer. For examples even get the doors off and get the roof off. You can put different rooms on. You better put different doors on.

You can get the fender flares off, you can there's multiple bumpers, multiple grills and to the vehicle has got this high level of modularity. So that unfortunately that means that we kept the door open to doing lots of cool things. Is there a specific thing that we didn't manage? And you know what, I think credit to the system, that to the Forward Motor Company that we managed to to keep the door open to the cool ideas. I mean,

I'm a designer. I've you know, I won't I wouldn't be happy till I wouldn't want to retire from this industry and sort have made something of flies or there's been three D printed in one go from graphite. So our imagination is always it is always going to be out there. Um. But I think in a sort of practical sense, I think we we we managed to come to it's just about everything, which was a lot of

pressure on the on the team as a whole. We set ourselves, you know, more homework than normal, um, and we did everything in the same time as normal, which you know, for aard Is Tood's got amazing product of land process, very fast, very robust. But we just chose to do significantly more in the time available than normal. Yes, so please, I would imagine the base version comes in under thirty thours. That's a great bogey And all told

there are seven models. I was kind of surprised, Big Bend, Black Diamonds, Outer Banks, bad Lands, Wild Track and the first edition, which the initial run has already sold out. Why so many variations? Normally these things get fed out in year two and year three. Why come out of the gate with so many different choices. I think there's a few things there so well. First of all, we're not using the typical series non licature. There's no TITANEUM or XLT or any of those things. Um, so broncageserve

its own series walk. We chose to use locations instead of abbreviation, which I think is really fun. Um that becomes a creative opportunity in its own right, because our graphics team did an amazing job actually on the the series badges. They're all different. Um, they're all placed on the side of the vehicle, not the rear, And the

cool thing with them is actually reflective as well. So when you're on the campsite, new flasher a light over the mild, they'll pop in the distance, which is really fun. So lots of creating opportunity even even with those things. Um. But to come back to the original points, I think it's important to try. And our users are so diverse um and in fact, when we started the program, we had we had five target customers in mind. That's that's just to buy a way of explanation, that's relatively unusual

in my experience. In fact, it's completely unusual. You tend to have a target customer. The target customer for an automobile design tends to be an amalgamation of available the sticks, um and and behaviors sort of created into some sort of virtual humans um And it's a little bit it's a little bit superficial sometimes. But in this particular case, the five people that we were we were to trying to design for were very different and they were real,

real people that we've really spend time with. So we've got to know a little bit and got to observe doing their thing, which we learned a great deal from and they stand in both genders. From twenty one year old to a fifty plus year old guy, someone who lived in the city, to someone who's just not happened, not happy and left there hanging their truck off the edge of the cliff somewhere. Um. And then when you get down to it, you go, these people are so different.

You know what we need to do more to cater for them. Hence the greater number of series um, and also the different ways that we're going to allow customers to add packs to their vehicle to tune it, spec it lead to their needs. And so you say, interesting five inch tiles and everything. You know, no matter where you buy a base or you buy a bad land, you know you can get what you need. Quite interesting. Let's talk a little bit about the design process. Let's

use the Broncos as an example. How long have you been working on this new car? And is that typical for either a new vehicle or the reintroduction of an older vehicle. Whether we're doing a new new vehicle or reintroducing an iconic nameplate. I think you take pretty much

the same amount of time. It's always a very difficult question to answer this one because you sort of think that somebody would walk into the studio and say here, everybody, here's the brief, and then that's some indeterminate period in the future. They'll go, thanks very much, this is great. We'll just take this from here and how it goes. But we have a we have a build up too, and then we have a soft run out. So the amount of time it takes systems design it a vehicle

is it's a little bit. It's a little bit difficult to tie down. But what I can tell you was I think it was the The North American also showed it's twenty seven team sitting up in the in the Cobo Hall in Detroit looking down at are Then CEO announced the fact that the Bronco was coming back, and I think that's probably for me the point when I really although it was on my plate, that was a bit where I really thought, actually know what, Yeah, this

is the game is on. As he announced it, and they the screen behind him announced the Bronco coming back, and I noticed all the journalists heads around me all sort of went up. They all looked at each other and they all started scribbling curiously and writing text messages. I thought, things me, there's there's an energy from this. This isn't normal. This is much bigger than I've sort of anticipated. But you know, we don't we don't run

away and start making models. So the way, you know, we need to go through a heavy period of learning and absorbing information before we then start to to start really start putting our pen to paper. And for us on this particular project, but putting the pence to paper was was quite unusual, and we bent the rules all

over the place to to get this vehicle through. Because all those fourd has got a fantastic product development process, we needed to reshape it a little bit to to fit Bronco into it, and so we we didn't do glamour sketches might the automotive industry typically produces. My designers can all do it, It's just that we had a

different focus. The design of the vehicle emerged from Chinese doodles on post it notes and on scraps of paper that was pinned to a wall, where we were trying to sort of imagine our way through a day in the life of our five customers. And then we were realizing that there were problems along the way in there this role plane, and then we were designing solutions for that and there's a designer puts a pen to the paper,

they make something look like something. It was actually from those little drawings there that there's a glimmer of the design of the vehicle began to emerge. And then we went straight into virtual reality. We didn't make physical properties. Normally, the current stry makes scale clay models a little things

are sort of a yard or so long. We skipped that process entirely, went entirely just virtual and then on our next stage was to make a full sized vehicle, but not one made from modeling clay, which is a typical car industry medium. We made something out of packing material that we could all get in and out of and stand on and play with an open closed doors and modifying hack and immediately start modifying. So we did the process somewhat differently, and it was kind of fun.

I got into trouble a few times for not having things the normal things ready at the normal times, but I had another things which I thought were probably more useful to to learning and experimentation and furthering the development process. I read somewhere that one of the vps at Ford had one of the origin all Brancos and your team took it and did a laser scan and imported it into VR so you could literally get all of the proportions and measurements as a frame of reference. Well, first

of all, is that story true? And if it is true, how helpful was that process? That it's really true that specific Broncho that we used to belong to and still does belong to. My boss, the vice president, designed Maury Callum. And what's terristic about his bronco? Is it actually pretty stock? You know, there's almost no such thing as standard bronco

any longer. They've all been modified as they passed through the hands of all the owners and three families, and they've changed their purpose, you know, and parts needed to replace them. Marries is really original and it's quite beautiful. So it stood as a good reference point to us. In fact, we did scan it. We have very sophisticated equipment that is super accurate. It can pick up the orange peel in the painted surface scans down to the

factions of a millimeter thousands of a millimeter. So we did scan it, and we did import it into our particularly into our engineering CAD software, and it became a layer of information and amongst all the other layers of information that we were doing with at the time, So we took our best guests on the platform and power

train and cooling packs. We have all the zones for all of the light to allow to go, zones where we think we need to clear points for crash for example, cone visibility cones for radar, and there are a myriad of other things that we need to accommodate. If you imagine a sort of CAD engineering software with all these multitude of inputs and hovering somewhere in the middle of it, all of this ninety six to Bronco, it was pretty unusual actually to see it. I had to say that,

you know, it didn't just sit there preserves. It quickly became chopped up and moved around, and elements of it got lifted, reproportioned. As we use it as a baseline that the objective at that point was not to try and make the new Bronco like the old Bonco at all, but it stood as an excellent bookend and amongst all the other sort of modern day issues that we're having to sort of deal with, and and it served a

great purpose. Upon reflection, it was fascinating to bring, bring that vehicle back home, put it back in product development center in Dearborn, and then interrogate it in that way and then use it as a reference point for a new vehicle. I don't suspect there's been another Bronco used remotely like that. Certainly that original Bronco would have never have been designed with any catatol. It would be drawings and pens. So it was a fun process, I can

I can imagine you keep discussing your team. I'm curious how many people are on a typical design team like the Bronco and how are they divided up. Are there interior exterior, power trained people, electronics people or does everybody wear multitude of hats. So from my point of view, I'm responsible for the appearance and the sort of product

design of the vehicle interior and exterior as well. And so that team comprised of about well varied in numbers, but it was around about ten to fifteen people all told. Then we have to work very closely with our engineering colleagues who are concerned with electrical and interior and exterior and sheet metal experts and lighting experts, and you know, there's every area of the vehicle you can imagine as

ares an expert engineering team to work with. So we tend to be in the middle of quite a lot of it because we're sort of trying to do the overall image of the vehicle together. But fortunately, you know, we've got an extremely talented group of people. We had a few more on this project, perhaps than some other programs, but mainly because of the complexity of it required more

eyes and more hands on it. Yes, supertality group of people who actually some of who drive their own Broncos every day to work or in a pro current in the process of restoring them. So I will enthusi ast crowd as well. Quite fascinating. Let's talk a little bit about the future of of cars and designs and technology. One of the things I was kind of fascinated by was the mac E platform chassis, something that the Mustang Marquee truck is going to be based on. How versatile

is something like that? Are we going to see other vehicles coming out using that platform? And in general, do most carmakers like to come out with a versatile platform that you could put a variety of different vehicles on. Well, I can't comment on future product actions of course, I'm sure you'll appreciate this industry is highly secretive, but it is to accept that we need to fit some of

the technologies we're using. Our vehicles are so critical and so expensive to the develop that reuse is really important. And so this funny word terms at platform, you're the manufactured sort about platform strategies or which platform is this new vehicle based upon so I degree with the US is typical in the industry, but the platform can refer to this sort of otherwise usually hidden underbody of the vehicle. It can refer to the electrical infrastructure, the safety systems,

and also power train as well. So to that point, you know the Doronco that produced, you know, we're launching really three Broncos, the Bronco two Doors, the Bronco Forward Or and the Bronco Sport. The two and the Foward door of sharing a platform with one of our trucks, the Ranger in fact, but how bit modified and developed and tuned to really suit the off road space that we're we're designing it for. And the Bronco Sport is

most closely related to something like the Escape, very different. Again, it's had vast amounts of investment put into it to ensure that its capability off road is absolutely staggering, frankly, but that's how you use the platform to enable you to produce more vehicles affordably. Makes a lot of sense. So some manufacturers come up with a very recognizable common

design or user interface across their entire product lines. Four doesn't exactly do this, but when I look at the Bronco, I can imagine elements of that finding its way into other vehicles. What is it about BMW, probably more than anybody, has a certain design ethos that you see literally in every single vehicle. Tell us a little bit about the decision making that goes into the idea of a line up being similar or very very distinct from each other.

You're right, of course, that's the family look can be smeared across the entire range of vehicles. And I think for a number of years, decades, perhaps we've we've seen this has been a typical strategy. In fact, Board of used it as well. But you know, as our automotive space is stretched and we look at vehicles which aren't necessarily you know, haven't got necessarily four doors and a roof,

that have got another form factor to them. There's a point where some of these design languages can become quite challenged. They don't quite make it. That becomes quite difficult to apply that language of a low sleek sedan, for example, to a semi truck, or to a flying machine, or to a robot, drone or whatever. So you can become a limitation. And I think we've been quite smart actually as a brand in saying, well, you know what, everyone

loves a personality. You know, we turn on the TV and we love to see these personalities, these characters that we stand out and look different to one another. Imagine if you watch the chat show and everybody on it was exactly the same. You know, you want to see see differences and that creates tensions and excitement and discourse. And so you know, we're very lucky. It's forward. We've got. We have these nameplates that are so iconic that we can we can build on and really focus down on.

So you mustangs one, Bronco is another, Transit Frankly is another one on as well. And I think then once you've taken this idea that it's cool, in fact, it's got great potential in its differences, then then it frees you to focus down on doing exactly the right thing for that particular nameplate, which is why then you know a Bronco doesn't look like Explorer for example. You know,

it's important that the differences are made. There might be elements of you know, the Bronco's technology that we potentially could use elsewhere in our in our system, and that would be sensible good business practice to do if it if it offers the customer another vehicle line, a taffied improvement. But in terms of appearance, now we need to do things for Bronco that are true to Bronco and that's that's how you respect the brand, but it's also how

you build the brand going forwards. So let's talk a little bit about the future. Might we see at some point a hybrid Bronco or a diesel Bronco, or even an all electric Bronco. Is that conceivable? Again, you know, I can't can't comment on the future product actions. This is a competitive space, but the world of course is moving on, so we're open eyed to to all sorts

of eventualities. Very much along those lines, Ford announced a plan to work with Rivian's platform as a way to jump start an acceleration towards a either a hybrid or an electric future kind of interesting. I don't really recall Forward doing anything like that in recent memory. Is that just a way to hedge their bet against the internal combustion engine or is it something new because technology allows you to try things like that that you couldn't do previously.

Combination of all of those things that you know we have, that's a very spectacular piece of investment. And it's very exciting news that we're working with other companies all the time. A lot of their names will be not very common and unless you work deep inside the car industry. So I think a manufacturer like Forward wants to do the best, you know, and wants to progress as quickly as possible in a myriad of different directions depending on the needs

of the products and the and the user. And I think that the remin is just pensively just a more public version of that. But you know, before we were deep inside the car industry, we could talk about all of the microscopic ones right down to you know, and being a small company that might have invented an interesting way of molding a switch, you know, that would also be a method of trying to advance the subject of car and truck forwards for us Chriss our competitors fascinating

you earlier mentioned graphine. How important are materials like graphine in creating very lightweight but very strong materials that could be used in future products. You know, I yet to see graphine and really being used versus the promises that were originally made. But I think the key that we just need to be super open, open minded and constantly be looking towards and so you know, occasionally someone might say, well, you know, cars the same, don't they and you go,

what can tell you? But the people who producing them do not necessarily chet out to produce something that looks the same as everything else that their eyes on the future. But you know, if you're doing a one off, then yeah, you can make things out of exhausting materials and unobtainium. But the real challenge for product design is to try and take those principles and then bring them to the everyday person and to do it in volume as well. That's a heck of a challenge. And so you know,

you can't blame the chap for dreaming those dreams. Sometimes they turn into reality. We'll keep pushing. So let's stick with the issue of reality. When you're early in the design process of any product, how are you balancing budget restrictions? And what I mean by that is you have your internal cost structure and you have to work with that, but you also have a targeted m s r P. What the vehicle is going to go on sale for. How do those elements come into play as you work

your way through the process. There are people far cleverer in the designer to talk about numbers believe belief. I think we want to make profit making vehicles. Of course we do, and there are lots of different influences upon that. You can't laden a vehicle full of unnecessary componentry that the customer won't appreciate and expect to improve your bottom line.

So you've got to be I think quite focus on adding things to the vehicle where it's really necessary and where it's going to be really appreciated first and foremost. And then there's a constant tension between you know, what we're wanting to include, this is what we think we can sell it for, versus if you add a little bit of additional componentry or something to or feature technology or material to the vehicle. Will that actually make it worth more? You know, will come we command a high price,

will out in the market. This debate, the yo yoing of of factors, it's continual throughout the entire process, and we're an active participants in it. But we don't sit there with a calculator trying to work out the percentages. We'll make our case for things that we feel quite strongly about, and then there's a tied team, and the

PP team is really tight. You know, we can have good, frank and open debates about the merits of one execution versus another, and we're constantly looking for efficiencies to make things better. But in the case of the Bronco, I would come back and say that, you know, we were very open minded to the sort of less is more approach. There's really nothing on the outside of these vehicles that

he is superfluous or unnecessary or rivals. And it became a little bit of a hobby of mind driving to work in the morning, just looking at the other vehicles around me and thinking what can I take off that vehicle and that's still function as a vehicle. There's things that you can't take off. Obviously, the headlights. You know they have to be there, but you know, extraneous pieces of trim, you know, redundant lighting elements, all those sorts

of things. It became like a sort of training exercise to leave the excessive elements of cars starling behind and to focus exclusively on doing what was right for the Bronco. Really really, really fun. So I'm sure if that answers your question. But first of all, it's it's really complicated. The studio is definitely a part of that debate, and we ultimately come together to produce a vehicle it's going

to be very profitable for the company. So there are a number of things beneath the skin of the Branco that looked like they aren't inexpensive. So your terrain management system is called Goat goes over any terrain. You have seven different drive modes creating that cross beam free roof. That whole roof comes off from the front of the vehicle all the way to the back. That looks like

that was an engineering challenge. The trail furnacest. I mean, there's a lot of off roading tech built into this, the inclometer and including that, the ability to have a display on your dashboard of the exact degree of your X, Y and Z inclinations. None of that stuff looks especially inexpensive, so I'm just curious how you managed to, you know, work all that into a car that the base model is twenty Yeah, so you know this is again it's

about focus, isn't it. So I'd much prefer to have trail turnasist as a feature on it because I think it's meaningful to the customer. For example, offer the bumpers in body color. You would all the intrinsic complexity and costs of that would drive you know. So it's all about focus. And I think some of those technologies you just listed us super super progressive. That's absually fantastic, and they will make being off road and easier more for

filling a more accessible experience. You know, Broncos should be about these amazing stories. You learned this at the beginning of the development process. We have these beginning of a meeting. Everyone's sort of arrived and there's that little chatty bit before the gender starts, and it was a typical behavior for people to go our table too. Are the Bronco

should be like? And then you you get these photographs will come out of wallets, or the smartphone will come out and be a picture of that person's Bronco or their brothers Bronco, or their mum's Bronco, or the Bronco picture of their mom and dad when they were much younger, or the one they're looking out on at on bring a trailer or the models would come out of the pockets. You know, here, here's a hot wheels. That's what the

Bronco should be. What we learned very quickly was the Broncos is about stories, like human stories, rich enduring stories, and you know, you can't get to the point where the vehicle is going to be able to create news stories unless people are able to get access the vehicle and put it into the landscape. With those those stories be written most most intensely, and so technologies like that that make accessing the wilderness so much easier critical to

the vehicle. He should not look like it can do it. But it should not look like it can do it, but only in the hands of an expert. We should be able to make extra int of being off road, much more open to everybody, more democratic, so everybody involved in the program. Although it's not a product design, styling, design kind of element. Everybody would in the studio environment would recognize that those are deeply important and frankly and better trade off than, for example, a piece of chrome,

you know, decorative chrome on the outside. So we work together to produce products not not just things that look nice, quite quite fascinating. I have another four hours of questions, but I only have you for another five minutes, so so let's jump right to our speed rounds. These are the questions we ask all of our guests, and and let's it out with a simple question. What are you

streaming these days? Give us your favorite Netflix, Amazon Prime shows you're watching, or a podcast you might be listening to. What is keeping you entertained under lockdown? I watched very little television and all. Honestly, I spend most of my time researching things on social media. Podcast wise, actually, I'm a real fan of motor sports. Listened to the BBC's Checkered Flag formerly one podcast. I love the sort of references to high technology, teamwork and determination that comes through

that that I started quite inspiring. And also soon I'm going to be listening to the Bring Back Bronco podcast that's going to help explain some of the stories of the Bronco so that I will be listening to quite interesting. Tell us about some of your mentors who helped guide your career and helped you arrive where you are today. Probably, yeah, I would say your family is very good at helping

you start. You know that that child who was just fascinated with cars, who fortunately was dragged two places where amazing cars could be seen to sort of feed this fascination, I think that's a good starting point. Some of the tutors that I had at my universities were really instrumental and first of all allowing me to study in the first place, but then also helping encourage my enthusiasm and

point it in the right direction. But you know, more recently, I would say that I wouldn't Namames, but I would say it's a combination of the many very experienced, very senior people in in this company who have provided fantastic guidance and decision making and the multitude of products that have been involved with over the years. And it's from from those insights and encouragement that you're able to do more,

do more accurately and progress. It's it's not sort of Favorancis and it's frankly, it's just information, and you use that information in a in a really useful way to get better. Quite interesting. Tell us about what you're reading, What are you reading currently, or what are some of your previous favorite books? Wired? I read Wired Magazine. That's another book, but that that that I always read cover

to cover, usually early the morning with a coffee. Twenty one Lessons than twenty one Century, I usual, Noah Hararis being through that a couple of times. Actually, that that that that finds constantly quite inspiring. And a couple of books by Bill Bryson actually, particularly on the Home. That book was fascinating. Again. I read that over and over.

The amazing observations about something which is so familiar as a home, your house, you know, a journey through a house, each individual room and where that room came from, and what he's in that room, and where all those inventions came from. That simplicity that he's got in explaining things

that we just take for granted. Um, it seems like a very good analysis of brilliant product designed to me says that seems to to to be on my best on my table quite often, quite interesting what sort of advice would you give to a recent college graduate who was interested in working in the automotive industry. This is advice I give often because I'm in the fortune position

to be able to to employ people from college. And I guess why I always try and explain is is not to try and emulate what they think that they should be doing in the car industry, but too u former point of view, have a point of view about what they think mobility should be about in the future, and hang onto it and they keep keep driving that forwards.

And listen most of all to that little instinct. You know, we've all got it, and we know that it's there because sometimes it will be in a situation we go I knew that was going to happen. Will rather than be commenting after the effect, we need to listen to that little voice, you know, very quiet voice, much earlier on and act on it and do something in advance of a thing happening. So listen to your instinct, have the point of view, and do something with it. And

basically also worked really hard. We have been speaking with Paul Raith. He is the chief designer for the new Ford Bronco and the chief designer for Ford. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure and check out all of the previous three hundred and fifties such discussions we've had over the prior six years. You can find that at iTunes, Spotify, Overcast, Stitcher, wherever final podcasts are sold. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions. Write to us

at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure to check out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. Sign up for our daily reads at rid Halts dot com, follow us on Twitter at rit Halts, and be sure to give us a review at Apple iTunes. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff that helps put this conversation together each week. Michael Boyle is my producer. Michael bat Nick is my head of search. Marufal is our audio engineer. Attica val

Brunn is our project manager. I'm Barry Hults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.