June 26, 2026 Ford Motor Co. turned to veteran engineers to tackle persistent vehicle quality problems after finding that artificial intelligence tools alone were not producing the desired results, according to a Bloomberg report. The automaker hired about 350 experienced engineers over the past three years, a move that coincided with Ford becoming the highest-ranked mainstream brand in the latest JD Power Initial Quality Survey.
The company recruited former employees and specialists from suppliers to help address quality issues that had cost Ford billions of dollars.
Charles Poon, Ford’s vice-president of vehicle hardware engineering, said the company had not sufficiently incorporated the knowledge of its most experienced engineers into its development processes. “Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” Poon said during a call with reporters, according to Bloomberg. “Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles.”
Bloomberg reported that Ford brought back so-called “gray beard” engineers to mentor younger employees, lead quality reviews and improve AI systems by incorporating decades of engineering experience into training data.
Chief operating officer Kumar Galhotra said the veteran engineers were central to the company’s quality improvement efforts. “We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems” and not getting the desired results, Galhotra stated, according to Bloomberg. “We brought back technical specialists” and “they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.”
The engineers now oversee mandatory quality meetings and have helped reprogram AI tools to identify potential failures earlier in vehicle development, the report said.
Ford executives acknowledged the company initially overestimated what artificial intelligence could accomplish on its own. “Mistakenly we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” Poon said, according to Bloomberg.
Ford’s improved performance in the latest JD Power survey placed it ahead of long-time quality leaders Toyota and Honda. Only Porsche and Genesis ranked higher overall. The Ford F-150, Super Duty truck and Mustang each led their respective categories.
Despite the gains, Ford remains the most recalled automaker in the United States and expects approximately US$1 billion in warranty and material costs this year. According to Galhotra, the company’s recall figures largely reflect problems with older vehicles rather than current production. “Because we’re doing more to prevent issues upfront, we believe these recall numbers are going to steadily come down with the newer vehicles,” he said, according to Bloomberg.
