Ford rethinks EV strategy, is working on a smaller, cheaper EV platform
Ford rethinks EV strategy, is working on a smaller, cheaper EV platform
Ford now says mass-adoption needs EVs that cost the same as combustion cars.
For the last two years, a small "skunkworks" at the Ford Motor Company has been working on a low-cost electric vehicle platform, according to Ford CEO Jim Farley. Farley revealed the existence of this new platform during the automaker's quarterly financial results call with investors on Tuesday evening. The company is rethinking its electrification strategy, having now faced up to the reality that the current crop of EVs are too expensive for mass-market adoption to take off.
Ford was early to market with its Mustang Mach-E crossover, itself the product of a skunkworks-style development process: an internal group called Team Edison, formed to add some excitement to what was originally going to be a more boring compliance car. The team also took the bold step of making a fully electric version of the country's bestselling vehicle, the F-150 pickup truck.
Demand for the electric F-150 Lightning appeared strong, but a series of price hikes has resulted in really expensive trucks languishing on dealer forecourts and Ford cutting production shifts to reduce output. The Mustang Mach-E is still selling, although with barely any growth year on year.
Ford also split its EV activities into a separate division, called Model e, which exposes just how much money this is all costing—a loss of $4.7 billion. That's quite a lot more than the $3 billion it thought Model e would lose in 2023.
Farley said the company will develop smaller and cheaper EVs, although he did not announce any specific new models by name. "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 OEMs," he said.
"We made a bet in silence two years ago," Farley said of Ford's newest skunkworks. "They've developed a flexible platform that will not only deploy to several types of vehicles but will be a large install base for software and services," he told investors.
Ford may scale back some of its battery factory ambitions, too. "One of the things we’re taking advantage of in taking some timing delays is rationalizing the level and timing of our battery capacity to match demand and actually reassessing the vertical integration that we’re relying on, and betting on new chemistries and capacities," Farley said.
In 2023, Ford announced and then canceled a $3.5 billion plant to manufacture lithium iron phosphate battery packs in Michigan. But there are also three lithium-ion factories in the works in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Ford no longer expects Model e to be profitable by 2026, but Ford CFO John Lawler said that Model e would need to stop losing money "sooner or later."
"EVs are here to stay, customer adoption is growing, and their long-term upside is central to Ford+," said Lawler. "The customer insights we’re getting by being an early mover in electric pickups, SUVs, and commercial vehicles are invaluable—especially as we're developing next-generation EVs that are going to surprise customers and be profitable within a year of launch."
We badly need a ten thousand dollar car in the US. The price of a new automobile has gotten batshit insane and I look enviously overseas to places that can get cheap, modern Chinese EVs.
American automakers are doing the country a disservice by not following suit.
Or, dammit, let me buy a fucking Chinese car.
You can barely find a good used ICE car for $10,000, so I don't think that's ever gonna happen.
But one of my many myriad problems with the current crop of EVs is that they won't be under $10,000 on the used market in large numbers for a long time, since they're starting at $30,000 and way, way up.
If we want to electrify the fleet of American cars - which also has many myriad problems - we need for normal folks to be able to buy and use them.
You aren't gonna get one with union labor in the u.s. and even if it was made by non union labor either the workers would be horribly underpaid and/or the quality would be lower.
It's not right to compare prices between countries with vastly different price levels. Are u.s. farmers doing the country a disservice by not selling pork for $0.50 a pound? No we accept that we make more and that we should pay our fellow Americans more so they can have the same quality of life we do. Ideally this solidarity should extend internationally but we should at least preserve it in the U.S.
China needs a $10,000 vehicle because that's all there middle class making $20,000 can afford. The u.s. doesn't, plenty of middle class Americans are buying new $30,000 cars, they just aren't buying electric ones, they're getting huge SUVs and pickup trucks. What the u.s. needs is to disincentivize or even ban people from buying large gas cars that don't need them.
Eventually if everyone's forced to get evs the used stock will turn into evs too and you'll get your $10,000 ev without destroying the American auto industry and millions of good paying union jobs.
Overall demand in the US is still towards larger vehicles. Until we see a shift in that, we're not going to get small vehicle focused demand, especially in a smaller sector like EVs currently are.
I think part of that can be attributed to the same thing as the demand for single family suburban homes though: the lack of availability of anything else.
My mom just replaced her almost 10 year old Highlander with a RAV-4, which is basically the same thing but smaller. Except, her new RAV-4 is the same size as her Highlander was, and the newer Highlanders are even bigger than that.
I'm hanging on to a 20-year-old compact for dear life because I really cannot replace it. Everything is comparatively giant and very expensive. Plus it all sucks. I don't want a subscription car. And please give me real buttons.
For real! I tried a friend's new car recently and every action expect for blinkers and windshield wipers required you to look around as the buttons weren't physical.
I've got a 2015, and it still has physical buttons for most functions, if the touchscreen fails, I have no music or nav, but that's it. The new Teslas can't even be put in gear if the touchscreen fails.
Oh man the 2011 or so dodge caravans... So a component of the electrical system can die making the wiper blades not work. The replacement is not worth it money wise so you hard wire a switch to directly toggle the blades. But suddenly Bluetooth is gone from the touch screen. No menus will indicate it ever existing in the first place. You can still voice command "Bluetooth pairing" but it just exits all menus and returns to the radio. I miss the old days...
My vehicles start at 49yo (shit, just did the math!) No subscriptions, but a lot of failed buttons and levers along the way.
Maybe if they didn't waste time and money with all the telematics, infotainment, and "smart" crap, they'd actually produce a simple, cost effective car that actually does just what it's supposed to do and get people from point A to point B.
It's a battery on wheels. It's not rocket science.
It’s a battery on wheels. It’s not rocket science.
Batteries cost more.
The easiest way to get people to pay for the more expensive batteries is to load them up with "smart crap". Replicating software is literally $0... literally free. All those "smarts" are nothing on a per-car basis. EVs need these tricks to sell, because you'll never compete with a Honda Fit with batteries alone.
As far as Ford's lineup goes, remember that they have a 40mpg 5-seater Pickup Truck (the Ford Maverick) at only $25k. Its unlikely that Ford would ever come out with any kind of EV that could compete against this price point.
That being said, Ford's eTransit van is one of the more popular commercial vehicles. 100mi range is great for city businesses, and the van has more than enough room to cover most business needs. No its not a consumer daily driver car, but there's niches here that Ford's accomplished that no one else is going for.
Preach!
A Ford Focus EV would be sweet. Give it 250+ miles per full charge and 30k
It's buying it.
The model 3 RWD is basically already there in many places, ~$36k pre-tax incentives (Colorado tax incentive brings it down to $31k) and EPA est 272mi range (Out of Spec got 264mi in their 70mph range test). What we really need is something in this class for $20-25k.
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Out of Spec got 264mi in their 70mph range test
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That's what I'm hoping for except for the Fiesta, maybe that Puma that they're refusing to sell in the US for some reason
They made one for a couple of years (2017 - 2019 ish), I owned one. It was a compliance vehicle, I think it might have only been sold in California. Mine had 115 mi of range, which came from a battery pack they wedged in the trunk which reduced storage space and made the front wheel drive car very rear heavy and get no traction off the line. I had to learn how to accelerate from a stop without spinning the tires. It was loud in the cabin (road noise), super quick in traffic, had really shitty and laggy infotainment, using the heater obliterated the range by about 35%, and had a top speed of I think 75 mph. I did like the remote start and scheduled start, though. You could program a schedule when you'd get in your car, and it would have the cabin pre heated or cooled to your temp, music playing, etc. That felt fancy to me.
I love the focus hatchback platform, but they need to completely start over with that car on their new ev platform for it to be viable.
Thunderbird Lightning edition
These doofuses at Ford can't seem to trace slow sales to absurd price hikes. The lightning was the electric truck that made sense all the way up until it didn't. Now it's back the the drawing board.
I'm for what we gotta do to get off gas and weaken that oil money, but I wish these manufacturers would stop pretending like they didn't know what the problem was.
Fiesta EV!
The correct choice would be e-Pinto. It would have to be the cheapest ev on the market with no bells and whistles, no smart anything, but good enough for daily work commute with overnight charge at home. It would be pinto but nobody could say anything bad about it.
Or Focus. Or Escort. Affordable and useful would be nice.
Focus RS EV, please
I was so disappointed when Smart Car pulled out of North America. Those cars were so great for city living, nothing as compact available in the US now.
I never got those cars. The only use case I could see was what you described: high density downtown living. They are small but that's it. They were not cheap. They were not efficient. They were not convenient in any way other than the footprint. And if you are living and driving in a downtown area where the small size is a benefit, there is a good chance walking or other public transit options are more available anyway.
They just seemed way too niche.
In Europe the inner cities have restrictions that only allow these sorts of cars in. Now some only allow mini electric cars in so we saw lots of Renault twizy cars
I used to live in a city where a Smart Car made a lot of sense. It was a dense, walkable neighborhood with a lot of amenities, but there were things outside the city that I couldn't get to by public transit. For those times I needed a car, but I'd often not move it for a week except to avoid a fine on street cleaning day.
Mine was a Scion xA, which was almost as tiny. And for commuting I had a scooter.
A golf cart would be more economical and useful.
Also I think uber/lyft kinda killed the need for a city car for most people. Why buy a small useless car that you use maybe once a week for a butt ton of money. When you can pay $20 to drive to the other side of town? The savings on parking alone probably make it a better value.
They were also as mechanically reliable as a Mercedes... Seeing as how they had a Mercedes engine in them.
Agreed. Almost without fail it's easier on those environments to either be too rich to give a fuck what you drive or too poor and take transit at best.
They're completely fine for travel. I've taken one on the interstate numerous times. The owner, a driver known for not being great at driving, took it coast to coast (US). It's the downtown-parking car that takes you off the transit routes. It's the city car for the other 90% of the cities that aren't optimized for carless life and for people who travel to the suburbs and beyond. I considered one myself for a poor suburban parking situation. I ended up with a miata-length suzuki sidekick for the 4x4 snow fantasy and mildly better cargo situation without taking a big hit in fuel economy. It fares fine on the interstate too with all 90 screaming horses (and a little attention to wind)
The Smart Car wasn't a very good car though. Its engine was underpowered for how small it was, poor fuel economy, yet still required premium fuel. The transmission shifted like a teenager playing Grand Turismo on PS1 for the first time. The car also wasn't inexpensive.
The ONLY thing the Smart Car had over competitors was its small size, and for just a tiny bit bigger you could get a Prius C which fixed every single one of the Smart Car problems and even let you haul more than 1 bag of groceries.
I didn't own one and only rented so I never had to deal with maintenance or fuel. It was great for what I needed in the city and you could park it just about anywhere.
Cheaper electric cars would be great. But there are some elephants in the room. At least in the UK, insurance premiums are rising fast for EVs , due to expensive parts and long repair times. And they were already higher than ICV insurance due to higher list price and more powerful drivetrains. The charging network is growing very slowly and public fast chargers tend to be expensive. I haven’t done the maths, but I am not convinced the total cost of ownership works out well for EVs.
Dear Automakers,
I would like the following from EVs
Best Regards,
Me
I'd sign your petition.
Be nice if the powerboost or the lightning was a PHEV.
I swear there was buzz about an all-electric Maverick for like a weekend, before all mention of it completely disappeared.
I’m disappointed that never bore any fruit.
They literally have all the pieces in their hands. They just gotta make it. How they've been misreading the market and missing the mark is ridiculous?
EV Maverick, just keep the costs reasonable, people will buy it.
Even an EV Escape, EV Taurus, EV Focus. They can make it happen. Instead they keep trying to make ev luxury priced SUV and truck, or just ugly crap like the Cmax
Didn't they already say this a couple of weeks ago?
Yeah, article date Feb 7.