Ford’s Farley Says More to Come From ICEs

Electric vehicles are seemingly getting all of Ford's money and focus lately, not to mention all of Wall Street's attention, but Ford CEO Jim Farley says at a conference for investors and market analysts he's not standing still on internal-combustion vehicles either.

He's got big plans for those, too, including “radical reduction in complexity.” Greater commonality of parts would save costs and speed product development. Lower complexity also would simplify choices for consumers and reduce order-to-delivery time, Farley says at the Wolfe Global Auto Conference this week.

“We acknowledge, we have upside in the ICE business,” Farley says, in a webcast from the conference. There’s room to improve ICE vehicles in terms of quality and development costs, he says.

“We have too many people. Too much investment, too much complexity,” Farley says. “There’s waste.”

On another topic that’s fixating Wall Street, Farley says there’s “no plan” at Ford, to spin off either the internal-combustion business or the battery-electric-vehicle business.

Some Wall Street analysts want legacy manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors to split off the BEV business, in hopes that a pure-play BEV company could duplicate Tesla’s astronomical share prices and market value.

“Our competitors are Nio and Tesla,” Farley says. “We have to beat them, not match them. We also have to beat the rest of the ICE players.”

Naturally, Farley also has a lot to say about Ford’s push into BEVs. In September, the automaker announced plans to build a “mega-campus” called Blue Oval City in West Tennessee, and twin BEV battery plants in Kentucky, representing a total investment of $11.4 billion, including investments from battery partner SK Innovation.

Ford also has learned its new BEV buyers are a distinct group compared with traditional Ford customers, Farley says.

“The customers are different. Our go-to-market has to be different – and remote,” he says. “We need new talent on customer experience, if we want customers to go remote with the experience, on the BEV side.”

Farley says 70% to 80% of buyers for early Ford BEVs like the Mustang Mach-E either never owned a Ford before or haven’t considered a Ford “in a long time.”