Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, revealed in February that the business has been secretly developing a cheap platform for smaller electric vehicles for the past two years. The platform will see the production of the first EVs, a compact electric truck and SUV, priced at around $25,000. Initial models will use affordable LFP batteries when the platform launches in 2026. A substantial three-row electric SUV is experiencing a delay.
Farley brought up the impending threat of competition from Chinese manufacturers as one of the key elements propelling the shift towards more affordable EVs at a recent Wolfe Research conference. “We have to fix this problem,” Farley stated, adding that Ford needs to “bet on a smaller EV platform.” He was speaking as the CEO of a firm that has problems competing with Japan and South Korea.
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Farley also questions the idea that Americans only buy big cars. Electric vehicles that are smaller than the Ford Escape “completely work” and provide “dramatically better operating cost” than the smaller gas-powered vehicles that US automakers stopped producing a few years ago, which is a problem because big-ass trucks like the F-150 Lightning are costly to construct.
