Ford Revives 'Gray Beard' Engineering Team to Boost Vehicle Quality

Ford has hired, promoted, or brought back more than 350 experienced engineers after concluding that artificial intelligence alone was not enough to improve vehicle quality, according to a Bloomberg report published on June 25, 2026.

The report cited comments made by Ford executives during a media briefing following the release of the 2026 J.D. Power U.S. Initial Quality Study, where Ford ranked first among mass-market brands.

"Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it's only as good as the information you use to train it," Charles Poon, Vice President of Vehicle Hardware Engineering at Ford, said during the media briefing. "Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product."

AI was not Enough

According to Bloomberg, Ford increased its investment in experienced engineering talent after finding that AI systems depended on the quality of the engineering knowledge used to develop and train them. The report said the expanded workforce includes returning Ford employees, newly hired specialists, and internally promoted engineers.