We’ve seen quite the changing of the guard at Ford in recent years, all in an effort to correct certain issues while also preparing the company for the future in various ways. Ford CEO Jim Farley admitted over three years ago that some fresh faces were needed to help the automaker fix its recent quality woes, and the company is also taking the same sort of approach when it comes to its EV team, too.
“I’m sure we’ll get into it, but in short, the evolution revolution of our thinking was to develop a vehicle for manufacturability, to radically reduce the cost and the complexity of the vehicle with all new thinking that is not embedded in a traditional car company,” Farley said during a recent appearance on The Verge‘s Decoder podcast.
“To do that, we needed all new talent, and we needed them to be separate from Ford, separate from our IT solutions that we used to develop and release parts, and separate from a philosophy standpoint about how to radically simplify the vehicle. This is all to really get back to the basics of Ford and Henry Ford’s idea of a ‘universal car.'”
Ford did precisely that by creating its new “skunkworks” advanced EV team a few years ago, while bringing in former Apple and Tesla exec Doug Field to help staff the new outfit and make The Blue Oval more competitive in that regard. Since then, Farley has admitted that Ford is betting everything on this team as it works to catch up with the Chinese competition, and develop a low-cost EV platform set to underpin various future models.
Thus far, those efforts seem to be paying off, as Farley also admitted that the skunkworks team has figured out ways to operate in a much more cost-efficient manner than previous attempts.
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