Ford created a “skunkworks” lab two years ago with the mission of developing affordable electric vehicles, the company's chief executive said in an earnings call Tuesday. The team is led by Alan Clarke, who worked at Tesla for 12 years before joining Ford as executive director of advanced electric vehicle development. according TechCrunch.
Ford, like other global automakers, is struggling to perfect the formula for profitable electric vehicles. The company's Model e unit, which oversees electric vehicles and software products, reported a loss of $1.6 billion in the final quarter of 2023. Ford said it would slow the pace of money it spent on electric vehicles to better meet customer demand.
But the revelation of a lab working on low-cost electric vehicles shows that Ford is still determined to compete with Tesla and other automakers in the category.
“We made a silent bet two years ago.”
“We made a quiet bet two years ago,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said on an earnings call with investors. “We built a super talented skunkworks team to create a low-cost electric vehicle platform. It was a small group, a small team, some of the best EV engineers in the world, and it was separate from the Ford mothership. “It was a start-up.”
tech/”>According TechCrunch, the team is based in Irvine, California, and is made up of engineers from Auto Motive Power, or AMP, a power management startup acquired by Ford last year. AMP founder Anil Paryani now holds the title of executive director of engineering at Ford and coincided with Clarke at Tesla for several years, the outlet reports.
Clarke and his team have developed a “flexible platform that will not only be implemented in various types of vehicles, but will also be a large installed base for software and services that we are now seeing in (Ford) Pro,” the commercial services unit of the company. Farley said.
Ford aims to compete with Tesla, which is currently working on its own low-cost electric vehicle, as well as Chinese automakers like BYD, which have proven successful in selling millions of affordable plug-in vehicles around the world, he added.
But these vehicles won't be coming out anytime soon. The skunkworks team is likely working on what will be Ford's third generation vehicles. These will come after the company's second-generation electric vehicles, an electric pickup truck and a three-row SUV, which are expected to go into production at the company's Blue Oval campus in Tennessee starting in 2025. Those vehicles will be profitable “in the first 12 years.” months after its release,” Farley said.
Hybrids will also play an “increasingly important role” in Ford's future, he said. The company's hybrid sales increased 20 percent in 2023, and Farley said he expects them to increase 40 percent in 2024.
Ford has scaled back some of its electric vehicle plans as demand for the company's plug-in vehicles has slowed and some dealers have objected to the costly infrastructure upgrades needed to sell them. The company said it would delay $12 billion in investments, including a planned battery factory in Kentucky.
