Interview with Ford's Jim Farley

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It’s not often you get to hear the CEO of a major OEM tell about the challenges created by and the solutions to the paradigm shift from ICE to EV transportation. Toyota’s former CEO, Akio Toyoda, was what one might call an ‘EV denier.’ I think he did more harm than good to a great car company (my last three cars over more than 30 years were Toyotas). Sandy Munro has said that Ford was likely to be one of the few legacy automakers able to transition successfully from ICE to EV drive trains. Unlike analysts and experts Jim Farley has been in the industry for decades and is responsible for driving Ford into the EV age. He has inside knowledge few others have and is willing to make some of it public.

Highlights

Vertical integrations vs. supply chains
Vehicle to grid
Commodity vs. unique vehicle markets

The Man Behind The Best-Selling Truck In 50 Years - Ford CEO Jim Farley | The Fully Charged Podcast

On the podcast today is first-time guest and Ford CEO, Jim Farley. Prior to joining Ford in 2007, Farley was Group Vice President and General Manager of Lexus, and the Group Vice President responsible for all Toyota Division market planning, advertising and merchandising

Under Farley’s leadership, Ford has boosted investment in electric vehicles to more than $50 billion and has set ambitious targets for scaling their production to 600,000 EVs a year by the end of 2023 and more than 2 million by the end of 2026. Recorded over Zoom at the FC North show in Harrogate, Robert and Jim pull the curtain back and talk EV software, electric transits, the F-150, battery plants, and the Prius.

Denny Schlesinger

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Just a side note: At about 30:55 in the video, Farley mentions using Silicon Carbide for inverters as part of Ford’s shift to vertical integration to get better components.

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Tesla also does. In a recent presentation they commented that they were able to shrink chips to save on silicon carbide.

Denny Schlesinger

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Check out this earlier thread (on AEHR) where I discuss how Tesla was the first to put SiC into production inverters: Aehr Test Systems (AEHR) New Customer & CFO - #19 by Smorgasbord1

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Thanks. I guess I missed that post.

Denny Schlesinger

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Interesting comments from Farley at the end, talking about how the F150L project almost failed within Ford due to employees thinking it was “ stupid.”

So Farley split Ford to enable future EV projects to not fail. Classic Innovators Dilemma move.

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