Ford CEO Jim Farley has long made it quite clear that he views Chinese automakers as The Blue Oval’s chief rivals, based on the fact that the vehicles coming from that country these days are light years ahead in terms of quality and technology. In fact, Farley has gone so far as to say that Ford doesn’t have a future if it can’t figure out a way to compete with those Chinese rivals, even if none of them currently sell vehicles in the U.S. Recently, the executive touched on that particular subject once again.
“I went to [Executive Chairman] Bill Ford, the board, and my team. I said, ‘I love you guys, but I don’t think we can do this.’ The decision I arrived at, which was highly informed by meeting Doug Fields, was that we had to do it completely separately,” Farley said during a recent appearance on The Verge‘s Decoder podcast, speaking about the decision to bring in Fields as Ford’s chief EV, digital and design officer some time ago.
“Doug is a Model 3 chief engineer and worked on the car project at Apple. He was one of the first-generation software designers in AOS. He also designed the Segway early in his career. He’s been at the forefront of a lot of technology revolutions time and time again. I asked him, ‘Why can’t Ford do it?’ He’s like, ‘Jim, your part release system, your IT, your CAD design systems are 25 years uncompetitive. There’s no way you can beat BYD with that. You need real expertise.'”
It’s a pretty revealing admission from Farley, but also not surprising given his recent comments. Earlier this year, he also said that Chinese EVs and “their cost, their quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the west,” referring to those companies The Blue Oval’s chief rivals. In this same interview, Farley also said that “the Chinese are the 700-pound gorilla in the EV industry,” adding “there’s no real competition from Tesla, GM, or Ford with what we’ve seen from China. It is completely dominating the EV landscape globally and more and more outside of China.”
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And why Farley continues being CEO of Ford if he isn´t capable of compete not only with chinese brands, but any other brand worldwide? Ford has lost huge market share. In Europe for instance, Ford had the same market share than VW few years ago and now is way behind even of Kia and Hyundai. That´s not casual. The same can be said of other markets and that normally is because of the CEO´s wrong decisions. Perhaps it´s time that Ford seriously things in changing its CEO.
Problem is that he’s best buds with the other imbecile there – Billy. It’s just more brain-dead blather from Jimmy.
Farley started the “skunkworks” not long after becoming CEO. Not sure how this relates to being 25 years behind the Chinese.
As long a truck sales are humming-along, the Ford Family will pay little attention to this guy. For now, He has a wide berth to “impart His automotive wisdom and vision” during this singular market-segment prosperity.
It’s pretty obvious Ford has little interest in significantly growing the company beyond the F-150 brand. Costs too much and requires too much risk / exposure…..effort.
And brains- something this company is very short on.
If the U.S. does not buy the cheap and good Chinese EV’s, then it is all wasted effort. Besides, Trump will never let them it.
Trump won’t be president forever.
Biden didn’t want Chinese cars being sold here either…. I think that’s one thing people can agree on
Agree. But Biden was not hostile to EVs – there were tax credits to stimulate demand. Say what you want, but the remaining days of the ICE are limited. The US is no longer the largest market for automobiles and those markets are moving towards EVs faster than the US.
The only way to stimulate EV adoption is with a massive gasoline tax. Everything else has been tried and it all is just temporary. Long-term adoption will happen when fuel prices are near $4 and $5 a gallon
Or just cut your losses and shelve the EV disaster altogether. We proved that nobody wants them. We might consider if it were an option and not a mandate.
My F 150 Lightning was an option. I leased one with no EV tax credit. Love the ride and acceleration. I’ve had it almost a year with zero issues. About a $150/mo cheaper on fuel, too! Trump could care less about clean energy. There’s no turning back though. This is the future. It’s a shame we let our country get behind on just about everything.
California is moving this direction. Good luck with that. Adoption means most have access to charging at home and the price drops and they can handle hot and cold weather battery life, etc. its an open market. Buy what you want not what the government or control freak groups want.
If Jim loves Chinese autos it’s super easy to reverse engineer. Ignore their patents like they stole and ignored ours. Problem is labor costs and Farley knows this. Jim has cost Ford billions in losses on BEVs. Lucky for him Ford sells profitable trucks and SUVs. Which he had nothing to do with. No one would hire him after this gig except maybe the Chinese 🙄
SMH!!
Well Ford’s quality is worse than China’s!!!
The end is coming
25 years? Nah. Thats just Jim shooting off his mouth to get attention to the problem. 25 years would be flying cars quite frankly. The real Chinese (and Tesla) advances are in the platform, the architecture. It means redesigning the entire platform and getting the suppliers on board. That is designing things like seats differently. Designing building systems as modules and having only one central computer (easier with EVs than ICE). Every last automaker thought they could get away without doing this 5 years ago but now they think differently. That old battle axe Sandy Munroe warned them long ago….
well at least stallantis can start on a fresh sheet in North America. GM needs to redesign the operating system on all its EVs. GM needs to do what VW is doing after failing to do so the first time.
Ford needs to upgrade the mustang AND the EXISTING F150 lightning (they don’t need a new F150).
Of note, the individual Chinese companies have implemented some of arguably the dumbest , stupidest options imaginable. Only complete morons would want these options. We don’t need to imitate, we don’t need to catch up. We just need to make good solid EVs that don’t rely on the old platform approach.
Now I’m going to hop into my submarine car from China.
Jim Farley is reactive not proactive. He does not seem to be on top of automotive consumer trends . Ford has a great vehicle, the Everest, but is not recognizing the potential demand for it in the U.S.
The Everest is called the Bronco in the US, and it’s doing extremely well.