Jim Farley on Fully Charged Show

[ChasingCoral]

I haven't listened/watched yet but this interview between Robert Llewellyn and Jim Farley is available as podcast or YouTube video:

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[macchiaz-o]

Fascinating conversation. Worth a listen.

Farley spoke a bit about the next gen software and firmware that is underway. Ford is in-sourcing software engineering for many vehicle modules and has grown their software engineering team in order to do so.

It will be newly written code, "greenfield," by fresh eyes, so I expect this will cause a rocky start as they begin to roll this out to production vehicles in probably 2025 and later... Many new bugs. If they size and build the teams and processes appropriately, it should lead to a faster to ship, easier OTA rollout and within a few years, a good experience for owners and for Ford.

He didn't speak to how they'll do this switchover but I'm hoping they can start by updating modules on existing vehicles one at a time instead of a big bang switchover. For example, start with the passenger door modules, gather experience, and move to harder problems from there.

It might require overbuilding hardware capacity in some cases. For example a body control computer might have lots of extra compute, network, and memory capacity so that it can take ownership of passenger door controls (or whatever) at whatever time the first party software is fully ready for release. Until then, door modules from Acme Door Modules or whomever would still be included in the factory build.

 

[silverelan]

It’s in my queue to listen to! Did Farley happen to mention anything about Tesla and charging?

 

[Hammered]

It’s in my queue to listen to! Did Farley happen to mention anything about Tesla and charging?

No. This had the least amount of new known info in it. The only thing 'new' I picked up is that 30% of their workforce must retrain due to obsolescence. This could have been filmed a year ago and nobody would be the wiser.

 

[silverelan]

Fascinating conversation. Worth a listen.

Farley spoke a bit about the next gen software and firmware that is underway. Ford is in-sourcing software engineering for many vehicle modules and has grown their software engineering team in order to do so.

It will be newly written code, "greenfield," by fresh eyes, so I expect this will cause a rocky start as they begin to roll this out to production vehicles in probably 2025 and later... Many new bugs. If they size and build the teams and processes appropriately, it should lead to a faster to ship, easier OTA rollout and within a few years, a good experience for owners and for Ford.

He didn't speak to how they'll do this switchover but I'm hoping they can start by updating modules on existing vehicles one at a time instead of a big bang switchover. For example, start with the passenger door modules, gather experience, and move to harder problems from there.

It might require overbuilding hardware capacity in some cases. For example a body control computer might have lots of extra compute, network, and memory capacity so that it can take ownership of passenger door controls (or whatever) at whatever time the first party software is fully ready for release. Until then, door modules from Acme Door Modules or whomever would still be included in the factory build.

I just finished the podcast, turns out the timing of the interview was before the Tesla Supercharging partnership announcement.

Jim Farley said something really interesting involving Tesla. Farley says that Ford has no interest into getting into the utility bidding business with the Lightning but Tesla does this really well already with their Autobidder software + Powerwall home storage system. I got the impression that Farley was making room for some sort of partnership to bring Intelligent Backup Power to Tesla's Autobidder so owners could monetize their vehicle's battery storage capabilities.

 

[Hammered]

I just finished the podcast, turns out the timing of the interview was before the Tesla Supercharging partnership announcement.

Jim Farley said something really interesting involving Tesla. Farley says that Ford has no interest into getting into the utility bidding business with the Lightning but Tesla does this really well already with their Autobidder software + Powerwall home storage system. I got the impression that Farley was making room for some sort of partnership to bring Intelligent Backup Power to Tesla's Autobidder so owners could monetize their vehicle's battery storage capabilities.

That's a huge negative for the tesla ecosystem IMO. They could do a whole lot more if they just concentrated on BMS / power management instead of their push to sell entire self-contained units. very poor decision on their part when they could open up to a whole lot more customers, particularly the DIY / JBOS guys instead of pushing a proprietary ecosystem.

Batteries will be the limiting factor for the foreseeable future. Not sure why they're hellbent on trying to sell customers more batteries. Make a series of interchangeable products and let customers use their EV batts to their liking. Tesla really doesn't want to do that, and it makes very little logical sense when they could tap the entire market instead of just dealing specifically with their powerwalls -- which are considerably overpriced given the cost to acquire LFP cells. The industry really needs a smart and highly customizable 'backbone' to use multiple vendors. For once one of the DPRC's laws on requiring V2G is actually somewhat smart. That's not to say it will be done in a smart manner.

 

[Larry Paul]

Some of the statements that Mr. Farley made about the Rav4EV and his time at Toyota were at least misleading and some were completely in error/factually false.

He said the first generation of Rav4EV was really forced on the leadership team. Here is the context: It was forced because of the manufacturer MOA agreement that Toyota had with CARB (California Air Resources Board). So he was correct that Toyota Management was not setup to sell them. They were supposed to be fleet lease cars only that they would not have to support long term.

He said that they "...went to a direct model we sold direct to the customer..." This is not true for the 949 Rav4EV's built between 1997 (1998 model year) and 2001. Not one of them were ever offered for sale to any customer when they were new and they were almost always offered for lease to large fleets from LADWP, SCE, City of Santa Monica, PG&E etc. 100% of those cars were fleet lease only vehicles but he said "...we sold them one by one...". This is just not true. Most were volume leases.

He did correctly state that "...the car was only developed to be for short distance suppliers". (as in the fleet groups that I mention above).

He said the first generation was right hand drive that came to the states. I don't believe that is true, however, some of the first of the 69 cars that came in during 1997 may have been RHD.

He claimed that they sold them to educators and NGO leaders. May be possible that a handful of them were leased to some small fleet use people, but they were NEVER offered to be sold to them, at least not until the 2002 model year. In 2002 and 2003 Toyota changed this and 339 of these cars became the only cars offered that could have been purchased by the public.

Mr. Farley said the program "Pretty much failed". Well-I suppose it depends on what you mean by failed. The Rav4EV was never intended to have delivery of more than a hand full of cars because they were far too expensive to build in low volume-and they certainly were not profitable. I get that-and don't blame Toyota on not pushing them harder.

He then stated "We had to crush all of them by law..." Well, the early 1997/8 cars did have to be destroyed because of I think how they were imported (like a prototype vehicle), but this is not true for the majority of the Rav4EV's produced.

As I noted, all Rav4EV's delivered between 1997-2001 were exclusively leased vehicles to fleets with no option given to purchase them*, however, for the 2002-2003 model year there were 339 of these cars offered to the public for lease or purchase. Reportedly 238 of them were leased with an option to purchase them and 101 of them were purchased off the show room floor. I know-because my wife and I purchased our 2002 after a 5 month wait after we ordered the car. None of the 2002-2003 cars were forced to be destroyed by anyone. I also know this because we still own ours and there are many survivors in public hands (although few run today on 20+ year old batteries that were designed in the mid 1990's). We drive our car regularly and it still has about 80% of the battery capacity on cells made in 2002.

In 2002, they did super limited (aka virtually none) advertising or marketing to sell them. I know, I was looking for it and it was super hard to find. Only 25 dealers were able to deliver them, only one or two salesperson per dealership was actually trained to sell/lease them. Typically the dealerships that deployed them had 2-3 people trained for service.

I think a couple of billboards for a week went up for a week (just so they could say they did it). Virtually no advertising and the cars all had a super long lead time for delivery as nothing ever sat at the dealership. Every car was built after an order was placed. Most people when they need a car-they can't wait for 5 months (the story has not really changed my in over 1/4 of a century as we waited for 8 months to get our MME).

He then said "they were all lead acid batteries"- factually completely wrong. I can't say for certain that there were no prototypes built with PB batteries, but I know for a fact that 100% of ALL 1288 Rav's that were ever leased or sold to anyone in the USA outside of Toyota used Panasonic EV95 NiMh batteries (Jim Farley says they were lead acid batteries-simply pants on fire wrong). All of the Ford Ranger EV's and the 1997 S10 Electric EV used PB. The 1998 S10 Electric used NiMh chemistry. In 1996 the EV 1 used Delco PB, later switched to Panasonic PB and then they used NiMh in the 2nd gen of cars starting with the 1999 model.

FYI: *In May of 2005 a campaign was started called "DontCrush.com"when a two Rav4EV household was told that the identical in every way 2001 fleet vehicle had to be crushed and destroyed, even though it was 100% identical to her husbands car that they purchased did not. Toyota was shamed into not destroying all of their cars like the GM did with the EV1 and most (but not all) of the S10 Electric, Honda EV Plus (I had one that was destroyed at the end of the lease), Nissan Altra, and Chrysler did to the Epic vans that they built. Ford crushed most of their Ranger EV's but some of those were saved as well from destruction because they fought back.

The DontCrush.com group changed from the SaveEV1.com site where we ultimately lost the battle to save the last 80 or so EV1s from destruction. The fate of those cars was a crusher...

This is a low res copy of the flyer that saved a few of the fleet vehicle 2001 Rav4EV.

This group eventually became Plug In America.

Here is a video of my Rav4EV from the "Autotopia 2099" EV car show in December 2021 where it won the award for "Best Import" since they had no category for "best vintage EV".



And a picture of a local "Car's and Coffee" gathering last weekend. I am glad to say that it does draw a crowd even in a sea of muscle cars. It is an odd part of automotive history and people are interested to learn about early EV's. Most have no idea that the car ever existed as a factory EV.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

The podcast should be required listening for all Mach-e owners just for the information on the reason behind the problems updating modules on current gen cars.

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