Ford Motor Co. CEO Bill Ford Jr. has said the United States is “not quite ready yet” to compete with China in electric vehicle production, and said his company is taking an “all hands on deck” approach to getting ready.
Ford said in an interview on CNN Fareed Zakaria GPS. “They are not here, but they will come here, we think at some point, and we have to be prepared, and we are preparing.”
China is preparing to become It is the world’s second largest exporter of passenger cars, which has the potential to reshape the global auto industry and shake the dominance of its business partners and competitors. Overseas shipments of cars made in China have tripled since 2020 to more than 2.5 million last year, challenging traditional auto exporters such as Germany.
Ford announced this year that it would invest $3.5 billion in an electric vehicle battery plant in Michigan, raising concerns. Politician Controversial by saying that it will be powered by the technology and support of contemporary Chinese company Amperex Technology Co.Ltd.
US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took up the challenge in a Bloomberg TV interview On Sunday, he said the US should take steps to reduce China’s advantage in electric vehicle batteries and that building refining capacity for key materials “can be addressed.”
Buttigieg said the United States has to make sure that it is “in a position to take an economically sensible, environmentally sensible, geopolitically stable approach to how we get these vital elements of our economy that are only going to grow in importance.”
Ford, the grandson of founder Henry Ford, said he sees an opportunity for Ford engineers to understand the technology.
“All we do is license the technology,” he said. “It’s really important for our engineers to gain this knowledge so that we can eventually do it ourselves.”
Ford pushed back on the idea that production in the United States would force prices higher, arguing that making things in America was important and manufacturing jobs had a multiplier effect that could lead to a stronger economy.
“Once you start coming down the cost curve, and you start climbing the production curve, cost will come down, and it will come down even as we’re sitting here,” Ford said.
China is already deeply involved in electric vehicles in Europe, where the made-in-China cars sold are mostly electric models from Tesla Inc. Former Chinese-owned European brands such as Volvo and MG, and other models such as the Dacia Spring or BMW iX3, are also produced exclusively in China.