Ford once is also revising its plans to produce electric cars, a response to a difficult year for powertrain technology that is still making waves overseas but has seen local government support wane and customer enthusiasm wane.
Instead of planning to make enough electric cars to account for 40 percent of global sales by 2030 — as it promised just four years ago — Ford says it will focus on a wider range of hybrids, extended-range electric models, and battery-electric models, which executives now say will account for 50 percent of sales by the end of the decade. The automaker will make hybrid versions of almost every vehicle in its lineup, the company said.
The company will no longer make an all-electric pickup truck, Ford executives told reporters Monday, and will also buy an electric car plant in Tennessee to build gas-powered vehicles. Ford’s next-generation F-150 Lighting will be an extended-range electric vehicle, or EREV, a plug-in hybrid that uses an electric motor to power its wheels while a small gasoline engine charges the battery. Ford says the technology, which automakers have touted in recent years as a middle ground between battery-electric and electric-powered vehicles, will give its truck more towing power and a range of more than 700 miles.
Ford still plans to produce a mid-size electric truck with an initial target price of $30,000, which will be available in 2027. That will be the first of the “affordable” electric car models currently being designed at the skunkworks studio in California, which is set to use a “global” platform that will produce cheap cars.
The new plans leave Ford with a lot of battery manufacturing capacity, which the company says it will use by opening up a new business: a sideline for battery energy storage. The new business will produce low-cost and long-life lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, batteries for customers in the utility or data center industries.
“Ford is after the customer,” said Andrew Frick, president of the Ford Blue and Ford Model e, gas and battery vehicle businesses. US consumer acceptance of electric vehicles is not where the industry expected it to be at the start of the decade, he says. (Battery-electric vehicles currently account for about 7.5 percent of new US vehicle sales.) Frick also cited changes in the regulatory environment, including the Trump administration’s rollback of sales and consumer taxes on electric vehicles.
The company also canceled an electric van planned for the European market. Instead, Ford will work with Renault, in a partnership announced last week, to develop at least two Ford-branded electric vehicles in Europe—a move CEO Jim Farley called part of the “fight for our lives,” as American automakers try to compete with affordable EVs from China.
Ford said Monday it plans to produce a new gas-powered pickup truck in North America.
