https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2025/02/21/ford-jim-farely-evs-china/78980633007/
I agree. Is the Mach-e a “very large EV?” It costs $50k, which is too high in general, but that seems to be typical across the board. I’m not interested in going backwards to a gasser or hybrid. Trade wars won’t keep Chinese EVs out forever. We have DIY ghost guns, someone will find a way to bring in Xiaomi DIY ghost cars.
Honestly, I'd love for them to bring back the Focus electric as a small, "cheap" EV, on a purpose-built platform of course. Or the Fusion as sedan EV. The Ioniq 6 is selling relatively well, I think, and I guess Hyundai thinks it's worthwhile to sell that in the US. Not sure why Ford is thinking "oh wow it's so hard to build a cheaper EV" when this seems patently obvious.
I think there's a market for what you like - and I certainly don't think there's anything wrong with that. However, I beg to differ on no one wanting a shitty $20k econobox. China's success in the EV world shows that there are classes of people who don't really care about cars in terms of 0-60 times or tech (in fact, I'd argue that lots of people don't want additional tech past what's useful for EV driving). Some just want a clean, reliable form of transportation with minimal maintenance - which EVs mostly are currently. I'm looking for a second car myself, and I don't need it to do much more than get me around town and a commute into the city every so often. The classic Ioniq EV is definitely more than enough car for me, and I've love to have more options than that.
Agreed. But I doubt those ex-Apple and ex-Tesla folks have ever tried to fix the Sync QNX OTA process. That's a dead horse. Hopefully it's all-new.
My point is that price is not everything, and that holds true especially for EVs. We are nowhere near price parity with ice (which is typically thought of as $100/ kWh). I think we were $150+, last time I checked. And that hurts EVs in the low end far more than mid and high end for obvious reasons. So how will ford offer a low end car profitably? They will decontent the shit out of it. Remember, Ford is specialized in conceding complete market segments. They pulled out of the sedan market completely and became a truck company (ok, plus Mustang coupe). The domestics never made money on small, cheap cars in the last 40-50 years even when they had 100+ years of experience building them. So why would ford want to make a small and cheap EVs? All the engineers who have small car experience are dead and decomposed by now.
China has one union of hundreds of millions of workers. That union is (you guessed it) controlled by the government like virtually everything else. So the gov tells labor and management exactly how things are going to go. Everyone gets busy executing. Pretty simple and frictionless.
Watches people go drop $5k on a econobox with 100k+ miles on it.
Apples and cucumbers. Who gives a fuck about used? Farley isn’t selling used. He’s selling brand new vehicles.
