Ford to boost EV production to 600,000 a year with utes, vans and Mustangs

Ford is planning to increase production of electric vehicles to 600,000 units  a year across the world by 2023 in a bid to establish itself as the second-largest US-based producer of EVs behind industry giant Tesla.

In an interview with Automotive News published late last week, Ford CEO Jim Farley said his company would look to double the number of EVs the company had initially expected to produce over the next 24 months.

That significant and immediate increase in production is expected to be focused on Ford’s first three new EVs – the Mustang Mach-E, the F-150 Lightning, and the E-Transit.

Moreover, and highlighting Ford’s focus on the need to quickly increase EV production, this increase is set to happen before production is expected to begin at the company’s recently announced EV assembly plant in Tennessee.

“The demand is so much higher than we expected,” Farley said in his interview with Automotive News, according to CNBC News.

“It’s a really new experience for this big company, trying to be agile. We had to approach it very differently than we’ve done capacity planning.”

Ford’s new EV production target will be driven at least in part by increasing F-150 Lightning demand, with reservations now “approaching 200,000 units” according to Farley, who expects “north of 80%” of reservation holders to convert to actual sales.

The Ford F-150 Lightning is set to go on sale in the United States next year, and by the beginning of November reservations had already passed 160,000, highlighting the incredible demand for an electric ute.

This was again demonstrated by the results of a recent Autolist survey which saw the F-150 and the Chevrolet Silverado expected to begin deliveries in 2023 top both the Tesla Cybertruck and the Rivian R1T as the most desirous electric pickup trucks/utes by consumers.

Farley also told Automotive News that he hopes Ford will be able to slip into second place behind Tesla as a US-based producer of electric vehicles.

“Our goal is to become the clear No. 2 electric vehicle maker within the next couple years and then challenge for No. 1 as the huge investments we are making in EV and battery manufacturing come onstream and we rapidly expand our EV line-up,” a Ford spokesperson later told The Hill in a statement.

However, whether a production goal of 600,000 by 2023 would be enough to challenge for the second spot is not clear, considering that crosstown rival General Motors recently announced plans to sell 1 million electric vehicles globally by 2025, backed by a commitment of releasing 30 new global EVs by the same time.

A GM spokesperson speaking to CNBC News said the company was approaching 300,000 EV sales globally through the first nine months of 2021, though driven largely by its market in China.

GM is also planning to convert at least four of its North American plants into EV production facilities in the coming years, which will build on its EV production facilities in China and Michigan.

Ford is so confident in its ability to scale up its own production capacity, however, that Farley also told Automotive News that his company was walking away from plans to jointly develop an electric vehicle with EV start-up Rivian.

“When you compare today with when we originally made that investment [in Rivian], so much has changed: about our ability, about the brand’s direction in both cases, and now it’s more certain to use what we have to do.

“We want to invest in Rivian – we love their future as a company – but at this point we’re going to develop our own vehicles.”

Finally, separate from Farley’s interview, Ford announced last week that it had signed a non-binding agreement with semiconductor manufacturing company GlobalFoundries to advanced semiconductor manufacturing and technology development within the United States with an aim to boost chip supplies for Ford, and the US automotive industry.

The agreement will see the two companies collaborate to increase semiconductor supply for Ford’s current vehicle line-up as well as begin joint research and development to address the growing automotive industry demand for “feature-rich chips”.