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Jaguars vs Titans injury report, spread, over/under, schedule, live stream, TV channel

Urban Meyer did it. He’s taken center stage ahead of the Jacksonville Jaguars Week 14 matchup against the Tennesse Titans. Instead of talking about how much Trevor Lawrence has (or hasn’t) improved since the season opener or how the Jags’ defense matches up against the Titans’ offensive line, we spent the days preceding the game talking about the poor job Meyer has done leading the team.

However, a game will take place today and the Jaguars had better show up. They are riding a four-game losing streak while the Titans are coming off their bye, which they used to get a bit healthier. Winning at Nissan Stadium would be big for the Jaguars, as they could then focus on the strides they’ve made this season rather than how things haven’t gone the way they expected when they hired Meyer as their head coach.

Here’s all the info you need to know for the game, including the injury report, odds, the Jaguars’ remaining schedule, and where/how to watch it.

Jaguars Injury Report vs. Titans Week 14. 

The Jaguars are relatively healthy ahead of the game. They will get cornerback Shaquill Griffin back after missing the last two weeks with a concussion. Center Brandon Linder has been ruled out for the game but Jacksonville doesn’t have any players listed as questionable.

On the Titans sideline, wide receiver Julio Jones is expected to play after being activated from the Injured Reserve list. The two-time All-Pro nod missed three games with a hamstring injury. Tennesse doesn’t have any players listed as questionable for the game but they’ve ruled out five players, tight end Tommy Hudson (ankle), cornerback Jackrabbit Jenkins (ankle), linebacker David Long (hamstring), defensive lineman Teair Tart (ankle), and the newly acquired linebacker Zach Cunningham.

Jaguars Odds and Betting Pick Week 14.

The Jaguars are a 9-point underdog with a moneyline of +335, according to WynnBET. Bet $100 on them and win $335 for a total payout of $435. The Titans’ moneyline is set at -420. Place a wager of $420 on them to win $100. The over/under for the game is set at 44 points.

WynnBet Promo: Bet $1, Win $100 if any NFL or college football team scores. Claim offer now.

What channel will the Jaguars’ game be on Sunday?

CBS will show this one and it will start at 1:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m PT. Frank Frangie, Jeff Lageman, and Jaguars legend Tony Boselli will be calling the game. You can also listen to the live broadcast on 1010XL/92.5 FM.

Jaguars vs. Titans Live Stream.

Another option to watch the game is to live stream it on FuboTV. Sign here for your 7-day free trial any time you want.

Jaguars’ Next Game, Schedule.

And just like that, there will only be four games left in the 2021 season after this one. The Jaguars will come back home in Week 15 for the rematch against the Houston Texans. They will then have back-to-back away games. First, the New York Jets in Week 16 and the New England Patriots in Week 17. The Jags’ season finale will be against the Indianapolis Colts at TIAA Bank Field.

Week 15: vs. Houston Texans

Week 16: @ New York Jets

Week 17: @ New England Patriots

Week 18: vs. Indianapolis Colts

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Is the COVID-19 pandemic linked to a rise in blood pressure levels?

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New research examines trends in blood pressure during the pandemic. Aleks_G/Getty Images
  • Governments enacted emergency measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • These measures significantly altered people’s behavior.
  • In a new study, researchers wanted to see if there was a link between these changes in behavior and effects on people’s blood pressure.
  • The researchers found blood pressure increased during the pandemic compared with previous, non-pandemic years.

In a new study, researchers have found that blood pressure increased in adults in the United States during the pandemic compared with previous, non-pandemic years.

The research, published in the journal Circulation, makes clear that the health effects of the pandemic include not just the COVID-19 disease but also other, indirect health issues.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), blood pressure describes the pressure blood exerts against a person’s arterial walls.

Doctors measure blood pressure at two points: when a person’s heart is pumping, known as systolic blood pressure, and when a person’s heart is resting between beats, known as diastolic blood pressure.

If a person has high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, they are at a greater risk of stroke or heart disease. Hypertension can also damage a person’s liver, eyes, and brain.

The CDC state that 47{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of U.S. adults have hypertension, and in 2019 hypertension was the primary or contributing cause of more than 500,000 deaths.

A person can help maintain healthy blood pressure levels by eating a diet low in salt and high in fruit and vegetables, exercising regularly, avoiding smoking, and limiting alcohol intake.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted people’s behavior and access to regular medical care.

Researchers are interested to see if this disruption had an effect on people’s blood pressure levels.

To look at blood pressure levels during the pandemic relative to previous years, a group of scientists studied data from an employee wellness program in the U.S covering 2018–2020.

This involved 464,585 participants, 53.5{cfdf3f5372635aeb15fd3e2aecc7cb5d7150695e02bd72e0a44f1581164ad809} of whom were women, with an average age of 45.7 years in 2018. The paper offered no information regarding the racial or ethnic makeup of the participants.

The scientists compared blood pressure levels before the pandemic in 2018, 2019, and until March of 2020, when most U.S. states gave stay-at-home orders. They then compared these levels with those recorded from April–December 2020 during the pandemic.

The researchers found that before the pandemic, there was no significant change in blood pressure between years.

However, each month during the pandemic, blood pressure increased by an average of 1.1 to 2.5 millimeters of mercury (mmHg) for systolic blood pressure and 0.14 to 0.53 mmHg for diastolic blood pressure. This was the case for both women and men of different ages.

Women, on average, had greater increases for both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Older participants had greater systolic blood pressure increases, whereas younger participants had greater diastolic blood pressure increases.

Speaking to Medical News Today, Dr. Luke Laffin, co-director of the Center for Blood Pressure Disorders at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and the study’s lead author, said that “[d]ietary indiscretion, lack of exercise, central obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, and not taking prescribed blood pressure medications can all drive high blood pressure.”

“Other research demonstrates that lifestyle habits like excessive alcohol intake worsened during the pandemic, so it is not surprising that a blood pressure elevation followed.”

“We also know that patients hesitated to see their doctor, particularly in the early part of the pandemic, and that may have contributed to increased blood pressures,” said Dr. Laffin.

Prof. Matthew Bailey, who leads hypertension and renal research at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and was not involved in the study, told MNT that the findings were significant and had global implications.

“This paper has examined almost half a million people and clearly shows that the societal changes [and] restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic have increased blood pressure. The effect is particularly large in women, and there is also an unanticipated increase in young people.”

“A rise in blood pressure of this size increases the risk of debilitating heart attack or stroke. For individuals and their families, cardiovascular disease can be devastating. [F]or governments, these conditions are costly to treat and manage. Health budgets are already overstretched.”

“This study is based in the U.S. but is relevant globally. It provides an early warning signal that poor cardiovascular health might be a big problem a few years down the line,” said Prof. Bailey.

Dr. Tarek Antonios, a senior lecturer in physiological medicine at St George’s, University of London in the United Kingdom, and not involved in the study, told MNT the findings were not unexpected.

“I was not surprised when I saw this article. I am concerned about hypertension and the epidemic. If you put the two together — the COVID-19 epidemic and hypertension — there are certain different avenues [that connect] them.”

“The first one is the increased anxiety levels among the population. Lots of people lost their jobs, they became redundant, lost their businesses, and they lost income — all of this created a lot of stress and anxiety, and that can increase blood pressure. So this is one possible explanation.”

“The second is during the lockdown, there were no open gyms, no one was going out for running or sports, and many people — including some of my patients — put on a significant amount of weight. And once you put on weight, your blood pressure goes up as well.”

“The third point is that people are sitting at home most of the time, they order takeaways, and takeaways are full of salt, and therefore people have increased their salt intake. So there is a lot of stuff that may not be directly related to COVID-19, but [was] indirectly affected by this epidemic.”

“Some patients also found it very difficult to get in touch with their GPs and get a refill of their prescriptions. Some stopped taking their medications, and that also increased their blood pressure levels. [T]his is something we need to give information about to patients — that it is very important that they don’t stop the tablets.”

“Many of my patients have bought blood pressure machines so that they can monitor their own blood pressure and make sure that their blood pressure is well-controlled. This is my advice to most patients: get their own blood pressure machines and start measuring their blood pressure at home.”

Prof. Bailey said that he thought low-level stress and low quality sleep might be key factors in the increase in blood pressure.

“High blood pressure is caused by […] lifestyle [and] environmental factors that were difficult to avoid during pandemic restrictions. Many of us ate too much comfort food — high in salt, fat, and sugar — had limited capacity to exercise, and may have indulged in other […] habits such as drinking too much alcohol or smoking. Of these, the study was only able to discount weight gain itself.”

“I think a major factor is chronic low-level stress and poor sleep patterns. I think this will emerge as a big factor once more studies are done,” said Prof. Bailey.

Speaking to MNT, Dr. Helen Flaherty, head of health promotion and education at Heart Research UK and not involved in the study, also agreed that a range of factors may be at play when accounting for the increase in blood pressure.

“As a result of the pandemic, many people have seen a change to their usual lifestyle habits which, in many cases, can impact negatively on their blood pressure and cardiovascular health.”

“People working from home may be less physically active as they miss out on their usual walk to work or a trip to the gym. Physical activity may also be restricted where people are isolated at home due to the pandemic. In addition, changes to dietary habits, such as buying more takeaway foods, which may be higher in salt, can also contribute to raised blood pressure.”

“Many people have found the pandemic to be stressful and long-term stress is also associated with an increase in blood pressure, as well as behaviors that can increase blood pressure, such as smoking and alcohol consumption,” explained Dr. Flaherty.

As well as possible indirect factors that might account for the rise in blood pressure, Dr. Antonios highlighted that there could be more direct causes.

“The disease itself may cause high blood pressure because of the interaction with certain molecules like the angiotensin-converting enzyme receptors. Moreover, many of my patients called to tell me that once they got the vaccines — especially the first dose — their blood pressure went very high, and they ended up in A&E and casualty with systolic blood pressure exceeding 200 in some of them.”

“What is also interesting is that for many of [my patients], the blood pressure did not settle down and remained high — not as high as 200, but higher than it was before. I am doing some research now to look at the effects of vaccination on blood pressure. And I have at least nine patients who had the same reaction: [their] blood pressure went up, and they ended up in casualty at St George’s [hospital].”

“Since then, there have been two publications — one from Lausanne in Switzerland and the second from Italy — that describe exactly this. Especially with the BioNTech vaccine, the blood pressure goes very high. What we don’t know is why this happens and why it does not settle down,” said Dr. Antonios.

Dr. Antonios also said there could be a connection between long COVID and hypertension. However, this required more research.

“What we don’t know so far is if hypertension is part of the long COVID syndrome. Most papers and reviews have not included hypertension [as part of long COVID]. They have included, for example, chest problems, myocarditis, thromboembolic phenomena, or even diabetes, but hypertension is not yet part of this long COVID syndrome, which we don’t know much about.”

Dr. Laffin said researchers should continue monitoring blood pressure levels:

“It is going to be very important to identify if blood pressure elevations persisted throughout 2021, given that vaccination became more widespread and individuals started returning to see their medical provider. I think it is unlikely that we’ll see a decline to pre-pandemic levels until the current pandemic ends.”

Crucially, there are limitations to the generalizability of the study’s findings. In the U.S., Black adults consistently exhibit significantly higher rates of hypertension, for example, compared with their white counterparts. However, the present study did not characterize blood pressure based on race or ethnicity. This is an important point that researchers should further evaluate during the pandemic.

Fortunately, there are many things a person can do to try and maintain healthy blood pressure levels.

Prof. Bailey said: “I try to make sure I eat well and sleep well and have goals for regular exercise. Using mindfulness or breathing apps can be a really good way to unplug for a few minutes in the day. It’s a great idea to get your blood pressure measured — know your numbers — and to remember to keep taking the medicine if you have high blood pressure.”

“High blood pressure increases your risk of having a heart attack or stroke. However, many people are unaware that they have high blood pressure as there are usually no symptoms. It is important to have your blood pressure checked regularly. Ideal blood pressure is below 120/80 mmHg,” Dr. Flaherty told us.

“To maintain healthy blood pressure, it is important to maintain a healthy weight by eating a healthy diet and getting plenty of physical activity. Eating a diet that is not too high in salt also helps to avoid raised blood pressure. Keep an eye on food labels and avoid foods that have a high salt content, such as salted nuts and potato chips.”

“Limit your alcohol intake to no more than the recommended amounts — in the U.K. this is no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, spread out over 3 or more days.”

“Physical activity can help to reduce your blood pressure, and adults should aim to do 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity — for example, brisk walking — or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity — for example, running — each week.”

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New study links major fashion brands to Amazon deforestation | Brazil

New research into the fashion industry’s complex global supply chains shows that a number of large fashion brands are at risk of contributing to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, based on their connections to tanneries and other companies involved in the production of leather and leather goods.

The report, released Monday, analyzed nearly 500,000 rows of customs data and found that brands such as Coach, LVMH, Prada, H&M, Zara, Adidas, Nike, New Balance, Teva, UGG and Fendi have multiple connections to an industry that props up Amazon deforestation.

More than 50 brands have multiple supply-chain links to the largest Brazilian leather exporter, JBS, which is known to engage in Amazon deforestation. JBS recently made a commitment to achieve zero deforestation across its global supply chain by 2035, something environmental groups have called insufficient.

The study was conducted by Stand.earth, a supply chain research firm. The findings are surprising, in part because a number of the brands surveyed have recently announced policies to untangle themselves from actors along the supply chain that contribute to deforestation.

“With a third of companies surveyed having some kind of policy in place, [you’d expect] that would have an impact on deforestation,” said Greg Higgs, one of the researchers involved in the report. “The rate of deforestation is increasing, so the policies have no material effect.”

The researchers hope to one day expand to other industries that rely heavily on leather, like the automotive sector.

In 2019 and 2020, Brazil faced criticism from world leaders for not doing more to protect the forest from raging wildfires. Deforestation in the critical ecosystem continues at an alarming rate. Research has shown that the cattle industry is the single largest driver of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and the fashion industry is animportant cog in the leather exportation machine.

In fact, projections show that in order to keep supplying consumers with wallets, handbags and shoes, the fashion industry must slaughter 430m cows annually by 2025.

Their analysis does not prove a direct link between each fashion brand and Amazon deforestation; instead, researchers found connections that increase the probability of any individual garment coming from cattle ranching in the Amazon, an industry described as the No 1 culprit of deforestation in the area.

The report identified fashion brands that participate in the Leather Working Group or other voluntary commitments, but highlight that the Leather Working Group evaluates tanneries only on their ability to trace leather back to slaughterhouses, not back to farms.

“The goal is to develop a clear plan [for the fashion industry] to close the loopholes,” said Jungwon Kim, vice-president of strategy of Slow Factory, the climate justice non-profit that collaborated on the report.

Of the 84 companies analyzed by the report, 23 had explicit policies on deforestation. The researchers believe those 23 companies are “likely” violating their own policies, based on their findings. The fashion house LVMH, for example, was found to have a high risk of connections to Amazon deforestation – despite the fact that earlier this year the brand pledged to protect the vulnerable region with Unesco.

Sônia Guajajara, executive coordinator of the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance (APIB), said brands have “the moral responsibility, the influence and the economic resources” to stop working with suppliers contributing to deforestation in the Amazon today, “not in 10 years, not in 2025”.

The effect of recent wildfires in the Amazon has had devastating consequences for Indigenous groups, who say president Jair Bolsonaro forcibly removed Indigenous peoples to make way for agriculture, mining and other development activities.

Angeline Robertson, an investigative researcher who worked on the study, told the Guardian she hopes the fashion industry will take cues from their analysis and “work in their own self-interest”.

“In this time of climate emergency, if the fashion industry wants to be relevant, this is the opportunity,” she said.

Céline Semaan, chief executive and co-founder of Slow Factory, said brands should not use this as an opportunity to contribute to deforestation elsewhere, such as Guatemala or Mexico, but invest in and explore alternatives that are not extractive.

With lab-grown alternatives on the rise, a future where your favorite bag or sneakers don’t come at the expense of the Amazon rainforest is possible.

“At the end of the day, we have to find other solutions and other alternative leathers that are not animal-based and that are not plastic-based,” said Semaan. “With the resources that fashion companies have, there’s really no excuse.”

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Business News for Dec. 9, 2021

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers of both parties came out swinging in a hearing on Wednesday with Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, expressing deep skepticism and anger toward the company for not doing enough to protect young users.

In a hearing held by a Senate subcommittee on consumer protection, lawmakers grilled Mr. Mosseri on internal research leaked by a whistle-blower that showed Instagram had a toxic effect on some teenagers. They pressed him to commit to share data with researchers on algorithmic ranking systems and to support legislation for stronger privacy and security protections for children online.

Even Instagram’s announcements this week on new safety tools for children were too little and too late, they said.

“Facebook’s own researchers have been warning management, including yourself, Mr. Mosseri, for years,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the subcommittee. “Parents are asking, what is Congress doing to protect our kids and the resounding bipartisan message from this committee is that legislation is coming. We can’t rely on self-policing.”

The hearing is part of a growing effort in Washington to rein in the power of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies. Antitrust regulators are seeking to break up Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and lawmakers have introduced dozens of data privacy, speech and competition bills.

Calls for legislative changes have intensified in recent weeks, after a whistle-blower at Facebook leaked internal research that said Instagram led one out of three teenagers to feel worse about their body image and for as many as 16 percent of some teenagers in Britain to have thoughts of suicide. The documents obtained by the whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, often contradicted public statements made by Meta officials, who have long underplayed or rebutted criticism that Instagram harms the mental and emotional well-being of younger users.

“You better tell the truth,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat of Minnesota, told Mr. Mosseri. “You’re under oath.”

Mr. Mosseri, 38, was appearing before Congress for the first time. He is a longtime executive at Facebook and is considered a close lieutenant of the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. He joined the company in 2008 as a designer and gradually rose in the ranks to run the News Feed, a central feature of the Facebook app. In October 2018, he was named head of Instagram, weeks after the sudden resignations of the app’s founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.

He told lawmakers that Instagram often had a positive role in the lives of teenagers, such as by helping them establish connections during difficult times. He tried to direct attention at rivals, noting that more teenagers use TikTok and YouTube. He also acknowledged the skepticism among members of Congress toward Meta.

“I recognize that many in this room have deep reservations about our company,” Mr. Mosseri said. “But I want to assure you that we do have the same goal. We all want teens to be safe online.”

On Tuesday, Instagram announced new safety features for children. Mr. Mosseri mentioned those changes in the hearing, which include tools like a “take a break” function that is meant to help limit time spent online. (TikTok has a similar function that appears when users are spending too much time on the app.)

But Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the ranking Republican member of the subcommittee, said even the basic promises of privacy and security from the company had failed users.

This week, her staff set up an experimental account for a fictional 15-year-old and were surprised to find the profile automatically set to public exposure. Instagram says teenage accounts automatically default to the private setting.

Mr. Mosseri acknowledged the error and said Ms. Blackburn’s office exposed a flaw in Instagram’s controls that sets teenage accounts that were created on a web browser — and not on a mobile app — to public. “We will correct that,” Mr. Mosseri said.

Mr. Blumenthal’s office has received hundreds of calls and emails from parents about their negative experiences with Instagram, he has said. One parent recounted how her daughter’s interest in fitness on Instagram led the app to recommend accounts on extreme dieting, eating disorders and self-harm.

Mr. Blumenthal has homed in on the algorithms, which he called “800-pound gorillas in black boxes,” that push such recommendations.

Lawmakers, including Mr. Blumenthal and Ms. Blackburn, have proposed stronger data privacy rules aimed at protecting children and greater enforcement of age restrictions. They have also called for young users to be able to delete information online. Lawmakers have pursued similar legislation before, with little success. Though lawmakers often show bipartisan unity in the hearings, dozens of data privacy bills have been stymied by intense industry lobbying and partisan disagreement over how stringent laws should be.

Senator John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, has introduced a bill that would force companies to reveal more about their algorithmic ranking system. He asked if Instagram would allow users to rank their content chronologically, instead of through opaque decisions based purely on engagement.

Mr. Mosseri said the company was working on the feature, which could be available next year.

Though Mr. Mosseri repeated his support for regulations, he demurred when asked about specific proposals. He said he hadn’t read a bill introduced by Mr. Blumenthal and other lawmakers that could hold Meta liable for hosting harmful content. He wouldn’t commit to give up completely on the idea of building a version of the Instagram app for users under the age of 13. And he didn’t directly answer questions as to whether victims should be able to sue Meta for hosting sex-trafficking content.

Child advocacy groups said Mr. Mosseri failed to provide any greater assurances that Instagram would prioritize child safety.

“Today’s hearing was just more of the same: evasions, empty promises, and too-little, too-late gestures aimed at forestalling congressional action instead of meaningfully addressing Instagram’s harmful business model and design choices,” said Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay.

Leaders of the subcommittee said they would hold additional hearings, which may include more executives of Meta. Mr. Blumenthal said Mr. Mosseri’s vague commitment for “directional” support on laws “doesn’t cut it.”

“This industry has said it is in favor of government regulation but they have opposed specific measures with armies of lawyers and lobbyists and tons of money,” Mr. Blumenthal said.

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FORD’S JIM FARLEY: EV plan ‘exactly what we need’

DETROIT — In 14 months as CEO of Ford Motor Co., Jim Farley has displayed an affinity for baseball metaphors.

The industry, he likes to say, is in the “early innings” of electrification. On Ford’s third-quarter earnings call, he said the company was “taking big swings” with its new products and services.

If the pivot to electrification is like a baseball game, as Farley says, then Ford has some key at-bats coming up.

The automaker will begin producing the E-Transit electric van this month and is gearing up to start selling F-150 Lightning pickups next spring. In 2022, Ford also will begin construction on its Blue Oval City campus in Tennessee, which will include the company’s first new assembly plant in the U.S. in decades.

Farley, 59, spoke with Staff Reporter Michael Martinez and News Editor Nick Bunkley last month from his 12th-floor office at Ford’s Dearborn, Mich., headquarters. Here are edited excerpts.


Q: What made you confident enough to double your planned EV production to 600,000 vehicles per year? Was it the Lightning reservation numbers?

A: Demand is two to three times what we expected. And so that capacity had to be doubled — probably tripled if we could, but we can’t. Lightning, when we first got together we talked about volumes of 20,000 units a year. And I was like, no. So we capacitized something far north of 20,000, but it’s nowhere near the 160,000 units of demand we have today. Our reservations are approaching 200,000 units now and we’re moving those reservations to actual orders.

What percentage of F-150 Lightning reservations do you expect to convert to actual sales?

I think it’s going to be north of 80 percent, but we don’t know. The issue is that since we launched Lightning, full-size trucks have gotten a lot more expensive. So that price that we launched at is looking more and more attractive, so when people look at moving from a reservation to an order, I think it’s going to be extremely high — north of Bronco’s.

Have you gotten a sense for who wants to buy a Lightning compared with the gasoline truck?

It’s incremental so far. About 30 percent is F-150 customers, but 70 percent are new to the brand and new to pickups. It seems like a customer [for whom] the fuel economy or the image of a pickup didn’t work, but now that we’ve modernized it, they’ve found it more interesting.

If somebody’s new to EVs, what’s making them pick the Lightning over a Tesla or even a Mustang Mach-E?

It’s kind of like the modernization of the American horse. It’s a very positive image. Pickup trucks have a sort of unique feeling, even though it’s a mainstream product. I’m sure it’s upscale customers, and now they don’t have to worry about what people say in their neighborhood: “You’re buying a pickup truck? I thought you’d buy a BMW or something.” So it doesn’t have the stigma because it’s electric.

But what we’re hearing mostly is they like the Pro Power Onboard — the idea that if you lose power you can power your house; that’s the real breakthrough feature for those customers.

Since becoming CEO you’ve really accelerated Ford’s EV plans. Ultimately, does Ford need to go 100 percent EV in the U.S.?

We have a lot of rural customers at Ford that a lot of other brands don’t have. We have Super Duty customers who do heavy-duty towing: horse trailers, people in the energy business who are towing big-time loads over very long distances. It’s hard for me to imagine that all those customers will go electric in the next 10 years. They’re actually as interested in the technology as anyone, it’s just their use case is different than how we’ve designed the vehicles so far. It does feel, at least for Ford, the transition’s happening faster than we thought. But again, it’s the first inning of a maybe nine-inning game.

Beyond Blue Oval City, will you need new assembly plants as you transition to EVs or will you repurpose what you already have?

Obviously when you go 40 percent electric there’s a lot of optionality on the assembly side. We’ve announced this new plant; it’s going to be a huge site, and it’s going to build a vehicle we do not have today off a brand-new platform — a full-size pickup platform. We think it’s going to be incredibly high volume. What I know for sure that we have to build more of? Battery plants.

Was Ford too conservative during the beginning stages of COVID in canceling chip orders you didn’t think you’d need?

In retrospect, absolutely. But who would have known? I was in Dearborn Truck when we shut it all down. I was with [UAW President Rory Gamble] and he said that people were scared to come into work. I looked at John Savona and Kumar [Galhotra] and said, “Let’s shut it down.” How would I have known?

You had floated the idea of shipping unfinished vehicles to dealers. Are you past that point?

I think we have to remain very open. We’re discussing it today still. I think we trust our dealers; they’re one of our biggest advantages. If we had to do that and we did the right quality assurance and process, I wouldn’t hesitate at all. We haven’t been in that situation so far; early on it looked like we would, but I wouldn’t count that out yet. We think this will last through 2023 to some extent, and who knows what next year holds for us?

Ford’s stock has nearly tripled under your watch. Why does Wall Street like what you’re doing now?

Ford works best with a plan. You’ve got to have a plan. We have the Ford+ plan; everyone knows what it is. We’re executing against the plan. We’re turning around our automotive operations, our quality’s getting better, our launches are getting better. And if there’s one thing I want to leave you with, it’s that I don’t want to change this plan. It’s a good plan. It’s exactly what we need. But what keeps me up at night, as always, is execution. How do we get to be No. 2 in the next few years in the U.S. for battery electrics? That’s execution.

Would you consider spinning off the AV or EV business, or even Ford Pro?

Everything is on the table at Ford. Whatever’s going to be best for Ford. We’ve already said we’re now very open to having Argo be available to capital markets, that’s a big change for us. Everything’s on the table to make this transition and create this value. No one and nothing is sacred. In the last 14 months, we’ve gotten out of Brazil manufacturing and the same in India.

Does Ford need to do a better job educating dealers on EVs? If so what are you going to do about it?

Absolutely. First of all, you have to understand Ford’s market representation and dealer network is very different from our competitors. We have an enormous strength in commercial. Commercial dealers is like a totally different thing than retail dealers. If you look at a commercial dealer — Brian in Cleveland — he doesn’t sell anything other than white trucks and vans. And 100 percent of his profits come from service. He’s open 24/7 and he does business with people all over Ohio. So Brian’s dealership is going to change a lot. But the battery-electric vehicles we’re going to distribute and the services we’re going to sell at Ford Pro are going to be really different than retail. We’re going to sell telematics services, we’re going to finance our small customer’s shop itself, not just the vehicle fleet. We’ll have a full charging solution for the customers we’ll get.

We want to be the Supercharger network for depot charging. Those dealers’ businesses will be more and more remote service, and they’ll be heavily integrated into the service portfolio at Ford Pro. Their business will become a lot more specialized. Our retail dealers, this electric change is a big change for them and their staff. They also have to go remote for servicing the vehicle. And the questions they’re going to get as we really [use over the air updates on] the vehicle are going to be totally different than the questions they get today from customers. It will be more of a kind of Genius Bar relationship with customers. Probably more on your phone, on calls, than going into the dealership. A lot of the business will be remote, the way the customer wants it to be. As far as knowledgeable about the vehicle, yes, we have a huge job to do. But we’re doing that now.

Ford Motor Co. shed brands during the Great Recession. Have you given any thought to expanding Ford’s brand portfolio?

I think we kind of are with Broncos and Mustangs. But instead of a vertical brand like Mercury, we’re doing it horizontally, where we’re creating these families of vehicles. Some ICE, some digital. So yes. I think Maverick will be a new franchise. Just think about what we just did. It’s a $20,000 hybrid vehicle and the response has been completely out of control. Could we make other affordable vehicles as a Maverick family? Yes, of course we could. I think we will need those kind of brand extensions, but they’re going to stay within our icons.

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Chris Wallace leaving Fox News, joining CNN+ streaming service