Ford: We’ve learned a lot from Tesla

Ford has revealed exactly what learnings from EV leader Tesla will help it rapidly ramp up the number of electric vehicles it sells from the 60,000 it sold in 2021 to 600,000 by 2023 and then an incredible two million EVs annually by 2026.

The dramatic increase in EV production will help the Blue Oval brand deliver on Ford Australia’s promise to offer five electrified models by 2024, including the existing Escape PHEV followed by its first four EVs – the upcoming e-Transit and e-Transit Connect, almost certainly the Mustang Mach-E and perhaps the F-150 Lightning.

Speaking to journalists ahead of this week’s Detroit motor show, vice-president of the Ford’s newly formed Model e electric car division, Lisa Drake, said:

“Scale matters in the EV game. If we’ve learned anything from Tesla, and we’ve learned a lot from Tesla, [it’s] that producing low-complexity units and fully maximising an assembly facility, and then cranking those products out one after the other with really lean labour – that’s what you need to do to compete in this hyper competitive space.”

According to Drake, in the near future Ford's manufacturing facilities will be radically reconfigured and designed to run at full capacity.

The all-new Ford F-150 Lightning production line in Dearborn, Michigan is one such example of how the US car-maker will follow in Tesla's footsteps.

While 900 employees work on the combustion-powered F-150 line, just 300 workers assemble the battery-electric full-size pick-up, with a larger number of robots employed on the EV line slashing production costs.

According to the Model e boss, next year Ford’s 600,000 EV sales will consist of 270,000 Mustang Mach-Es, 150,000 e-Transits, more than 150,000 F-150 Lightning pick-ups and 30,000 units of a still-to-be-revealed new mid-size SUV that will be based on Volkswagen Group's MEB platform.

When asked if the two-million EV number was unrealistic, Drake replied:

“We’ve always under-called it on EVs. We under-called the Mach-E volume by a lot, we under-called F-150 volumes substantially, we’re under-calling E-Transit – they’re sold out.

“It’s not an uneducated guess. We know these markets well and it’s a reasonable to assume we will build that number.

“As a company we build around six million cars [annually] around the globe – and it [EV] is around a third of the fleet and that’s four years from now. That seems about right.”

Helping keep up with demand, Ford has inked a new deal with battery-maker CATL to supply it with lithium-iron phosphate batteries that are cheaper to produce and last between four and five times longer than lithium-ion cells, although they have a lower power density than traditional power packs.

Ford has also entered into agreements with mining companies to supply raw materials directly. The Blue Oval has already announced deals with both BHP and Lionsgate in Australia to supply nickel and lithium for future batteries.

Drake also confirmed work was continuing with US firm Solid Power, which is developing the firm's next-gen solid-state battery technology, although the senior Ford exec admitted that those batteries are not expected to be introduced until the end of this decade at the earliest.

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