Ford and Volkswagen first announced an alliance between the two automakers back in 2019, which aims to mitigate the cost of new vehicle development by sharing those expenses, along with platforms, powerplants, and entire vehicles. The first fruits of that effort – as well as a strategic partnership announced roughly one year later – are a handful of rebadged products, such as the next-generation Ford Transit Connect, which will live on in Europe as a VW model with Blue Oval badging, while a pair of new Ford EVs are slated to launch in Europe in the next year or so riding on Volkswagen’s MEB platform. However, future Ford EVs in Europe may not follow suit, according to Financial Times.
This news comes from Martin Sander, FoMoCo’s head of electric vehicles in Europe, who stated that the automaker intends to launch all-electric vehicles in the future that utilize the automaker’s own, in-house system, which is being engineered in the U.S. at this time. This new system features “no kind of integration [with VW], it is very versatile, very capable,” Sander said. “We are exploring all kinds of opportunities, how far can we go, what kind of segments can we cover with this.”
At the same time, Sander also pointed out that no final decision has been made in terms of Ford and Volkswagen’s future collaboration on EVs, and noted the automaker is open to producing vehicles that ride on other platforms, whether they come from VW or another automaker altogether.
Meanwhile, Ford’s pair of MEB-based EV crossovers are just two of seven new models planned for Europe by 2024 as the automaker aims to go all-electric in that region by 2030 or sooner. The so-called “sport” crossover model – which could be called the Explorer Sport – is set to debut in March, followed by the other, “mid-size” crossover later in the year. Last year, Ford doubled its production target of these new MEB crossovers, and intends to build around 30,000 of them by 2024 as part of its planned 600k unit global EV output.
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Comments
As Ford should. Unfortunately, VW’s are poorly made and designed to fall apart after 4 years / 75,000 miles or so, to incite you to buy a new one. I owned one some years back an learned the hard way, at least I had an honest German mechanic who told me the truth even though he was making a bunch $$ fixing the POS’s .
Have they gotten better? Doesn’t look that way, still consistently on the bottom of the reliability ratings and suck on the resale (People know better than buying a used VW). The sooner Ford is off the VW train, the better before they ruin Ford’s EV reputation.
Years back … antique anecdotal experience doth hardly a reliable data point make. (I bought new a VW in 1989, but would never use my experiences as a critique for their products today.)
It would make sense that Ford will move to its own platform.
The MEB license was just an act of convenience from before the time Ford made a hard pivot to investing in its own proprietary IP BEV stack for batteries, motors and software development and industrialization.
MEB was a hedge strategy, no so different from Rivian for Lincoln.
In the case of MEB, in addition to expertise, resources and timing, MEB was also tied to the commercial truck deal, so it was harder to get out of as fast as Rivian.
As for VW, both the MEB license and the commercial truck deal represent consequences of the fallout of VW’s decade long diesel fraud, and being cash poor, the Ford deals helped VW in the former to subsidize its pivot to BEV through scale effects and license fees, and in the latter to avoid new product CAPEX where VW was a smaller player (i.e. commercial vans and pickups).
As with AutoEuropa and AutoLatina a generation and a half ago, the MEB/commercial truck deal was made out of necessity owing to the relative weakness of both Ford and VW, as it was then so it is again, so it likely will be again, and once both VW and Ford Are feeling their oats again these deals will get unwound too.