It is a difficult time for the automotive sector due to the drop in domestic sales and exports, but it is not all bad news.
Although some terminals have a more difficult scenario, with models that do not work and projects that fall, an automaker has important expansion plans. Is about ford. Since the completion of the project to produce the new Ranger, which required an investment of US$580 million, everything is favorable.
He had a bad time with the divorce he had with Volkswagen, in Argentina, for the production of a joint pickup. The German company continues with its “local” Amarok, which is not the generation that is manufactured in South Africa. Meanwhile, Ford has the global model and has been growing in sales in the domestic market.
To consolidate this good moment, it is moving forward with two important plans. The first is to start producing the Ranger single cab at the General Pacheco plant. Today only Toyota makes this silhouette. The rest of the brands (Volkswagen, Nissan and Renault) are dedicated exclusively to making double cab pickups.
Ford does the same thing so far with the Ranger. However, the plan to add the gasoline single cabin would already be approved starting in 2025, possibly by August of that year. The idea is to manufacture about 5,000 units per year that will be added to the production of all double cabin versions. For this year, the Pacheco plant plans to manufacture 59,800 pickups. With the new silhouette it would reach 65,000. These 5,000 units will be distributed between single cab and chassis-only version. The same thing that Toyota does today.
The other fact about this model is that the main market will be Brazil. But the loudest news heard in the hallways of the General Pacheco plant has to do with a project that would mark a before and after for the brand in Argentina. “The hybrid pickup is coming,” they say at the terminal.
Company internal sources assured MDZ that the decision would have been made, but in such a volatile Argentina everything must be reported with caution. Since the platform of the current Ranger is the global generation of the “chata”, a vehicle can receive this technology. Until now, the only automaker that had whitewashed the intention to produce a hybrid vehicle in Argentina was Toyota.
The former president of the company, Daniel Herrero, He referred to this project on several occasions. In principle, the idea was to announce it for 2023 or 2024, but it was postponed and today it is at an impasse. Some say suspended; others, canceled.
For it to come to fruition, the Hilux would have to renew its platform and that would not be in Japan’s plans, for now. The versions say that it would be postponed to 2027, although they are versions. At Toyota’s headquarters, there is an internal debate about where green technology will go: betting on electric and hybrid vehicles or hydrogen.
On the other hand, the hybrid Ranger project has more chances. The internal deadlines that are managed in the company are that its production start would be for 2026. The world is moving towards ecological technologies and, sooner or later, Argentina will receive the production of a model of this type. Today everything seems like Ford would be on the edge.
