Meghana KandraFord CEO Jim Farley talks about Tesla when asked about the competition at The Street. He says he has respect for Tesla and that Tesla has been the most important and positive thing in the industry. He also adds that he can’t wait to start the competition with their electric truck, with Tesla.
Image credits- The Drive
Farley said, “I respect what Tesla has done. I think Tesla has been one of the most important and positive things that happened to our industry. We love competition at Ford and I can’t wait to go into business with them in the truck market,”
Despite being the competitor, and seeing jab each other on the internet, this is not the first time Farley complimented Tesla. In May during the F-150 release, he complimented Tesla. While both companies have been fighting on their electric pickups. Recently Rivian started rolling out its first electric pickup deliveries last month. Being the first, the company did not notch down on many features of the vehicles. It looks like an electric pickup but is capable of being a mid-level truck that can carry more loads than expected.
Talking about competition
Tesla’s Cybertruck and Ford’s F-150 are known to be different but have similar prices and ranges. However, Rivian offers more features with a higher price range. Farley mentioned Lucid, Rivian, Nio from China and said that there will be many other new companies where some will be successful and others won’t.
Further said, “I wouldn’t bet against Ford. We have constantly innovated. We bought integrity manufacturing to our industry course assembly line.” Later added, “Now we’re remanufacturing with these EVs and we have huge scale. We’ve been the best-selling brand and have a successful nameplate in the industry for decades. When we go electric with this scale like we are with these announcements, one million vehicles worth of batteries are announced just with this. So, you know, that’s almost half our volume. So we really can’t change the industry and we’re really excited to compete with new digital companies. We think we have a lot to offer.”
The summary stated by Farley is impressive, as they say, the industry is changing to digital, yet they plan to compete strongly in the EV industry. It is possibly the first time when the automobile industry is being challenged, and the newly formed companies, startups have better chances at keeping up with the race. Especially considering the fact that many large companies, despite having EV models, could not keep up with the semi-conductor chip shortage. Not to forget the General Motors Chevy Bolt EV fire incidents. Despite General Motors is in the industry, the fire incidents not only reduced the company sales but also impacted public opinion on electric vehicles.