Farley Had To Convince Elon Musk To Open EV Network: Report

Ford became the first of many automakers to sign a deal with Tesla last May, one that has now granted the owners of its all-electric vehicles access to that company’s expansive Supercharger network – the country’s highest-rated EV charging network. This partnership resulted in the creation of a special adapter that existing Ford EV owners can now order for free, and those same owners won’t need to utilize the Tesla app to pay for their charging sessions, either. However, it seems as if Tesla CEO Elon Musk needed to be convinced to open up access to the Supercharger network in general, according to InsideEVs.

In a recent interview with Ford CEO Jim Farley, Tom Moloughney learned that Elon Musk actually rejected Ford’s proposal at first, but once Farley spoke directly with the Tesla CEO, he wound up changing his mind. “I talked to [Ford’s chief electric vehicle, digital and design officer and Tesla veteran] Doug Field, and I said, ‘Do you think they would be open to it?’,” Farley said. “And so he called and they said, nah, it’s not very interesting to them.’ But then they examined the data around connectivity with most non-Tesla chargers and saw how uncompetitive they were.”

“It became pretty clear, pretty quickly, that we could become pretty arrogant and keep our head in the sand, or we could really call them and say, ‘We really want to do this,'” Farley said. The Blue Oval exec added that he then “reached out to Elon personally,” noting that “he thought about it, and he said, ‘yeah, we can probably make that work, Jim.’ It was a pretty big project. Both teams had to be committed to making it happen.”

This is a truly interesting revelation, and perhaps more importantly, the fact that Farley was able to convince Elon Musk to partner with FoMoCo on this effort also opened the door for essentially every other automaker that sells vehicles in the U.S. to follow suit – vastly expanding their access to EV chargers across the country in one fell swoop.

We’ll have more on Ford and Tesla’s partnership soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for 24/7 Ford news coverage.