Why do some companies like Ford have a 5year warranty and others like Hyundai have a 10year warranty?

Does the company with the longer warranty trust in their product longer? Or they know that the owner will have to do a ton of repairs and without a back up no one would ever buy them?

Unions.

You have to understand how they determine the length of warranty period in the first place. All manufacturers that warranty their product(s) have done extensive testing to prove either the product itself or the manufacturing process that it was made with. Once they have all of that testing data which includes environmental testing, life testing, destructive testing, etc., they utilize statistics to determine the mean life span (average) of the item. Once they have that number, they can either elect to improve the product to increase it's mean life or they can simply place a warranty span on the item that is below the average life of the item. By doing the latter, most failures will occur outside of the warrantied period offered by the manufacturer. You also have to look at what the warranty covers. Normally it's the drive train and in todays world relatively few drive trains fail due to improved manufacturing techniques. So it's simply a matter that Ford is willing to give 5 years while Hyundai is willing to provide the 10 year period. And yes, it's really about increasing sales and competing better with a sales giant such as Ford in the case you've identified.

Why are you posting this in the Desktop area?

(sigh)

Hyundai knows that the American market does not trust a Korea built car like they might trust a US made vehicle so they offer a bigger warranty to try and offset the fears.