Ford turns to veteran engineers to rein in AI and improve quality

Ford has brought back and hired hundreds of experienced engineers to help fix quality problems and sharpen its use of artificial intelligence, Fortune reported. The effort matters because the automaker has been trying to cut recall and warranty costs while showing that automation still needs human judgment.

Over the past three years, Ford has hired 350 veteran engineers, including former Ford employees and workers from suppliers, according to Fortune. Inside the company, the group is known as “gray beards,” Fortune reported.

Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters last week that AI depends on the material used to train it. He said Ford had not paid enough attention in earlier years to the knowledge held by engineers who had worked through many vehicle development cycles, according to Fortune.

The engineers now help train younger staff and adjust AI systems that were not working well, Fortune reported. Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s chief operating officer, said at the same press meeting that the specialists look for likely failures before parts reach factories.

Quality push follows costly recalls

Ford’s quality push follows a costly period for the company. Fortune reported that recalls were costing Ford $4.8 billion a year by mid-2024, citing Bloomberg.

In July 2025, Ford had issued 90 recalls in a single year, the highest number for an automaker, Fortune reported. That included an estimated $570 million charge tied to nearly 700,000 crossover vehicles.

Ford has since moved up in quality rankings. The company ranked first among mainstream brands in the latest JD Power Initial Quality Survey published Thursday, after ranking 10th the previous year, according to Fortune.

Ford has credited the improvement to a culture shift centered on workers, Fortune reported. CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg TV that Ford uses AI tools for vision systems, but said the gains depend most on employees paying close attention to manufacturing details.

Ford still expects more than $1 billion in warranty and material costs this year, according to company financial materials cited by Fortune. Galhotra said those costs are a lagging measure and should fall as newer vehicles benefit from more prevention work, though he did not give a specific date for when recall numbers would turn.

Farley told Fortune that warranty coverage and recall costs are coming down and are creating “hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars” in cost benefits for Ford. Fortune said Ford did not immediately respond to its request for comment.

Ford links automation to worker shortages

Farley has also argued that the broader U.S. economy needs more skilled trade workers, Fortune reported. He has previously said the country is short 600,000 factory workers and 500,000 construction workers, and has called for more vocational training, apprenticeships and trade-focused policies.

Farley told Axios last year that the shortage was partly an awareness and societal problem, according to Fortune. He also said Ford needed 6,000 technicians in its dealerships “on Monday morning.”

The company’s approach comes as other businesses test AI with uneven returns. Fortune cited a contested MIT study from 2025 that found only 5% of companies were seeing meaningful returns from generative AI pilots, along with other surveys showing a gap between AI adoption and results.

Labor groups are watching the shift closely. Fortune reported that United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain said at a union conference this month that workers should share in the financial gains created by automation-driven productivity, and warned against using AI in ways that deny workers those benefits.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.