Ford has long worked to sell consumers on the virtues of all-electric vehicles, all while investing heavily in that particular area of the business. Trouble is, those same consumers haven’t quite gravitated toward EVs as quickly as previously anticipated, which has prompted The Blue Oval to shift gears and instead focus on offering a diverse array of powertrain options for the foreseeable future. Ford has also admitted on multiple occasions that its customers will ultimately dictate the pace of EV adoption, sentiments that an executive recently echoed yet again.
“It’s not about an arbitrary market share being reached,” Ford’s vice president of electric vehicle programs, Darren Palmer, told Quartz in a recent interview. “But when electric vehicles are simply better for more customers – better to drive, cheaper to own, and easier to integrate into daily life. Sales of electric vehicles are growing but many remain skeptical about making the jump due to charging and range, which is understandable. Our job is to really help and educate customers to help them see that an electric vehicle is a great choice for many.”
Palmer was quick to note that the “tipping point” for EV adoption won’t come from regulations or politics, interestingly enough. Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford recently echoed this sentiment when he stated that the company isn’t trying to “force” consumers into EVs, and Ford CEO Jim Farley has also called those same types of vehicles “political footballs.”
As for Farley, he also believes that consumers will eventually come around to EVs as well, and he sees hybrids as a bit of a stepping stone in that regard. Farley also stated that he feels as if Americans, specifically, need to “embrace” small cars, and thinks that at least half of today’s consumers would be better served with one, rather than a traditional ICE vehicle – based on Ford’s own consumer usage and cost of ownership data.
Comments
Relieved Trump is in bc I heard him say we get a “choice” of what we want to drive. So far, my new hybrid is heading for the lemon law. Sad because I loved it. If I want to stay with Lincoln I will have to go smaller, just as I saw in this article. Thank goodness dealer says it can be gas.
Farley says we should embrace small EVs. When is he going to build them?
The root problem is not range anxiety but charging anxiety.
I wouldn’t mind taking 10 minutes for charging 20%-80% on the road IF it could be as transparent as filling up with gas : no phone app, one standard connector, always available chargers, no broken charger.
Yet another Ford exec stating the obvious but they still don’t listen. Customers don’t want EVs at all right now, except in California, but all you hear about from Ford is EV, EV, EV. Mary over at GM does the same thing, mostly.
So true..
There is no more brand loyalty for Ford.
Quality Sucks ass.
There MSRP are a joke just like Farley
I have a Mach E and use it for the one day a week I have to drive to work. It cost me about $80 in parts to put a 220 charger in the garage for it. However, there is no way I would own it if it was the only car we had. Several years ago, we had to jump in the car and drive over 1,000 miles for a family emergency. There is no way I would do that in an electric vehicle. I had a Fusion hybrid at the time and it got about 40 mpg on the trip. It’s not skepticism about electric cars, it’s called reality.
I’ve been driving electric since 2018 when I bought a Chevy Volt PHV , the engine only ever ran for self maintenance, my cost for driving to work was $30 a month, my Lightning cost $50 for the same trip. I recently did a 700 mile round trip, finding charging was not a problem, I even took advantage of some free charging! Charging infrastructure and reliability is growing.
World wide electric vehicles are taking over the market. Do you really think auto manufacturers are going to keep building ICE vehicles just for a few backward states in the US?
Define backwards states. Here in the Midwest and most other places, California is seen as a “backwards.”