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DEARBORN, Michigan (AP) Ford is replacing CEO Mark Fields as it struggles to keep its traditional auto-manufacturing business running smoothly while remaking itself as a nimble, high-tech provider of new mobility services. Fields will be replaced by Jim Hackett, a former CEO of office furniture company Steelcase Inc. who joined Ford's board in 2013. In three years as CEO, Fields began Ford's transition from a traditional automaker into a "mobility" company, laying out plans to build autonomous vehicles and explore new services such as ride-hailing and car-sharing. Silicon Valley companies such as Google were pushing into the car business, while Uber and Lyft threatened to change people's attitudes toward car ownership. [...] it was Fields who put Hackett in charge of those projects as head of mobility. Under Fields, Ford achieved a record pretax profit of $10.8 billion in 2015 as SUV and truck sales soared in the U.S. But there were rumblings that Fields wasn't focused enough on Ford's core business. The stock price sagged electric car maker Tesla Inc. even passed Ford in market value earlier this year. [...] investors worried about Ford's sliding U.S. market share and product decisions. [...] Mary Barra who became GM's CEO about six months before Fields became Ford's has made a series of headline-grabbing moves, such as forming a partnership with the ride-hailing company Lyft and pulling GM out of unprofitable markets, including Europe, India and South Africa.
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