With EV demand slowing a tad in 2023 – even though all-electric vehicles, in general, set new sales records last year – Ford CEO Jim Farley has made it clear that high prices remain one of the biggest barriers standing in the way of mass EV adoption. Automakers like Ford are also well aware of the threat posed by affordable Chinese all-electric vehicles, too. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently stated that Chinese EV automakers will “demolish” their American counterparts when they wind up being sold in the U.S., and Farley also noted that he believes those same companies are Ford’s biggest rivals moving forward, too. Thus, perhaps it comes as no surprise that the overall Ford EV strategy is now shifting to focus on smaller, cheaper models, according to Automotive News.
“We’re also adjusting our capital, switching more focus onto smaller EV products,” Farley told investors during the automaker’s Q4 earnings call. “We are nowhere near our earnings potential. All of our EV teams are ruthlessly focused on cost and efficiency in our EV products because the ultimate competition is going to be the affordable Tesla and the Chinese.”
This news was presented alongside the revelation that a new, low-cost Ford EV platform has been secretly in development for around two years now, as Ford Authority reported yesterday. Different from the three dedicated EV platforms the automaker announced around three years ago, this new architecture project is being spearheaded by former Tesla engineering director Alan Clarke, who now serves as the head of Ford’s Advanced EV development team.
Clarke’s skunkworks team – which has been operating more like a startup and in total secrecy – is based in Irvine, California, and employs engineers from Auto Motive Power (AMP), an EV startup that FoMoCo acquired back in November 2023. That group also includes AMP founder Anil Paryani, who worked with Clarke for roughly five years at Tesla.
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Comments
The best EV strategy is to stay away from them until quick charge solid state batteries are inexpensive, reliable, and safe.
And Americans still won’t buy them due to the Nationwide grassroots boycott against EVs. Ford is already losing $42k on every EV sold per the latest automotive news articles.
How much do you get paid to leave the same comment under different names and the same email and IP address on different articles about EVs?