The co-executive chairman of Ford motors Bill Ford Jr said on Monday that the US is “not quite yet ready“ to rival with China in production of electric vehicles, and mentioned that his company is taking an “all hands on deck“ strategy to prepare for forthcoming challenges.
In an interview with CNN’s Farid Zakaria GPS Sunday Programme, the Ford chairman said, “They developed very quickly, and they have developed them in large scale, and now they are exporting, they are not here, but they will come here we think at some point and we need to be ready, and we are getting ready.”
China is set to become the world’s second largest exporter of passenger vehicles, and it is subsequently reshaping the global auto industry and studying up the monopoly of its car trading partners as well as competitors. Abroad shipments of cars that are manufactured in China have increased three times since 2020 to reach more than 2.5 million in 2022, rivalling with traditional car exporters such as Germany.
This year itself, Ford announced that it will be investing $3.5 billion in an electrical vehicle plant battery in Michigan. This announcement sparked political controversy when Ford said that it will operate with technology and support from China’s firm Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd.
Source: CNBC
In a Bloomberg television interview on Sunday, US transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg addressed the challenge saying that US must carve out steps to cut into China’s advantage in electric vehicle batteries and that “building the refining capacity for key materials is addressable.”
America has to make sure that it is “positioning to have an economically sensible, environmentally sensible and Jio politically stable approach to how we are going to get these vitally important elements in an economy that are only to grow in importance,“ he added.
The great grand son of founder Henry Ford, Bill Ford said that he can foresee an opportunity for his company’s engineers to know more about the technology.
He said, “All we are doing is licensing the technology. That’s really important that our engineers gain that knowledge so we can eventually do it ourselves.”
”It (Michigan) Is the wholly owned Ford facility. They will be our employees and all we are doing is licensing the technology.”
The automaker asserted the idea that US-based production will cause a rise in prices, and argued that making things in America matters and that manufacturing jobs have a strong effect that can lead to a better economy. Ford said, “once you start to come down the cost curve, and you start climbing up the production curve, the cost curve will come down, and they are coming down even as we are sitting here.”
He added, “We will understand how CATL makes the batteries but also prepare them to be integrated into the vehicle… That’s really important that are engineers game that’s knowledge so we can eventually do it ourselves.”
China is already deeply engrossed in electrical car manufacturing in Europe, where the China made vehicles are sold for major league electric models from Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. Former european brands that are now owned by China such as Volvo and MG, other models like Dacia Spring, BMWIX3, are also produced exclusively in China.
In May, Ford CEO Jim Farley said that Chinese electric vehicle makers or its Ark competitors in the industry, and that Ford requires distinctive branding or minimised course to combat the Chinese automakers.
He said, “I think we see the Chinese as the main competitor, not General Motors or Toyota. The Chinese are going to be the powerhouse.”
