Ford CEO: "After disassembling Tesla and Chinese electric vehicles, I feel deeply ashamed!"
On December 18, the South Korean media outlet "Today's Digital" published an article stating that Ford Motor Company's Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jim Farley, said he was shocked by the results of analyzing competitors' electric vehicles and announced plans to completely revise the company's electric vehicle strategy to survive in global competition.
According to electric vehicle media Electric, Farley said in an interview recently: "After disassembling the Tesla Model 3 and a few other Chinese electric vehicles, I feel deeply ashamed. This is truly shocking."
According to him, Ford found through the industry-standard "reverse engineering" process that the wiring in the Mustang Mach-E is 1.6 kilometers longer than that of the Tesla Model 3. He also said that similar astonishing results were obtained when disassembling the vehicles of Chinese competitors.
Farley said, "We realized that if we gave up electric vehicles, we would have to hand over the market to China, which led to a major change in Ford's electric vehicle strategy."
He said, "Electric vehicles are booming in China." And added that China is using economies of scale to promote electric vehicles. He continued, "This is not just a problem in the United States. If we want to be a global company, we cannot retreat in the field of electric vehicles. We cannot give up this opportunity to China."
This discovery quickly led to action. Ford is working on developing smaller and more affordable electric vehicles, which require less battery capacity and fewer materials. Ford has promised that the efficiency and advanced features of the next generation of electric vehicles will far exceed the current Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning.
Farley said, "The development trend of the U.S. electric vehicle market is different from what we expected, and consumers want to buy vehicles priced below $70,000 to $80,000." For this reason, Ford is developing a new, lower-cost electric vehicle platform and production system - the Ford Global Electric Vehicle Platform - and plans to use this platform to launch more affordable electric vehicles.
Ford is developing a mid-size electric pickup truck priced at around $30,000, which is expected to be launched in 2027, and plans to partner with Chinese company CATL to launch low-cost iron phosphate batteries. However, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Ford has already suspended the production of the F-150 Lightning electric pickup and is considering completely canceling the production line for this model.
At the same time, like most automakers, Ford is preparing for a slowdown in electric vehicle sales in the coming months. In the third-quarter earnings call, Farley predicted that electric vehicle sales would slow down and expects that in the short term, the share of electric vehicles in the U.S. automobile market will be only 5%.
Original: toutiao.com/article/1850926025897099/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author alone.