I believe the F-Series sales are a 50/50 mix between people who actually need a pickup and the compensating for something crowd.
The people who need a pickup can be swayed pretty easily to other vehicles - those same people will shop between a Silverado and a Titan and whatever else. They'll consider Rivian's pickup trucks. They'll consider Tesla's Cybertruck. And some of them will switch. ~30% of those people switching coupled with 10% of the compensation group switching will be enough to drop F-Series sales by 20% and kill Ford.
I'm not sure the US is going to bail out Ford. I think there's a decent chance that somebody else buys Ford. UAW and the Democratic party might be okay with Ford being bought by GM or Stallantis, since employees would remain within the same union.
UAW and Democrats would hate it, but Musk might have Tesla buy Ford. This would give them the Mustang, Model E, and F-Series brands... I'm not sure. That would come with a lot of baggage in the form of unions, dealers, and legacy ICE vehicles, but it would come with a lot of goodwill in middle America, maybe.
If I may speak for my experience as a middle American and rust-belter, I have some disagreements.
In my job I encounter the demographics that need trucks to do our jobs.
We simply cannot afford new trucks. The prices for new and used trucks are quickly ballooning out of control, the last time I went shopping for a new vehicle my choices were a barely used hatchback (love my Focus, by the by) or a choice of decade old, 100,000 mile trucks.
There is no world where 15,000 for a truck well past it’s usable lifespan is sane. And when new off-the-lot trucks often go past 40,000 dollars for a half ton, the target market becomes obvious, and it isn’t us who use them daily.
As for electric trucks, I can 100% assure you that they’re more hype than practical as currently. If you look at the marketing for these trucks they are “hobby vehicles”, not workhorses. The cybertruck is shown as taking a four wheeler into the desert to drive across dunes, and the Rivian is shown camping.
These are not hauling livestock, or tractors, or farm machinery. They would be unsuited to do that for multiple reasons I won’t get into right now.
To clarify, I do believe they will get there someday, but not in the near future.
And, these suffer from the price bloat problem I stated above, The Electric F-150 is the cheapest, and it starts at 40,000. The Rivian at 60,000.
Without delving too far into politics, the last Auto bailout was heavily Union driven, and midwestern Democrats are heavily Union. Likewise most Democrats are very anti-big-business, I can’t see them approving a GM-Ford merger over a straight bailout.
As for Tesla, I don’t see any benefit to them in buying a legacy automaker. They already are the household name of EVs, and ICE engines wouldn’t appeal to them. Gaining access to a dealer network wouldn’t appeal either because they’re fighting the dealership system. (Personally, I believe Tesla is far overvalued currently.)
