Hear me out.
EV production is slow. Component prices are up. Stock price continues to slump. Company is shedding employees in droves in a number of ways. Recession on the horizon. Quality in the cr----r.
So what does he do? He goes before the retired engineers and claims that fixing quality is the #1 priority. And that it will take years to fix.
See what he did there? The first paragraph would mean most CEOs their jobs. He knows this. So he is subliminally planting in people's heads, Bill Ford's chief among them, that quality will take YEARS to solve. The genius is that he is trying to buy himself time as CEO. Even if Bill falls for it for another year, that is one more year of $20 million+ in compensation for himself.
Mad genius. He should already have been fired and now he is manipulating his way to stay for the foreseeable future.