Rebecca Cook/Reuters
Ford CEO Jim Farley thinks his company has cracked how to beat China’s affordable EVs.
Farley announced on Monday that Ford is making an additional $2 billion investment in EVs by overhauling its Louisville assembly line, bringing the automaker’s total commitments to $5 billion. Ford plans to use the retooled Kentucky line to produce a midsize EV truck with a starting price of $30,000 that will roll out in 2027.
Ford needed to make such a move, Farley said, to hold back BYD and other competitors.
“We saw this coming for years. We knew that the Chinese would be the major player for us globally, companies like BYD, new startups from around the world,” Farley said. “Big technology has their ambition in the auto space. They’re all coming for us, legacy automotive companies.”
Addressing Tesla, Farley said that the automaker has learned that most current EVs don’t address what buyers actually want.
“People love their EVs if they have a duty cycle that fits,” Farley told CNBC in an interview following the announcement. “A computer can have a lot lower costs — that’s why we redid this platform, the Ford Universal Electrical Platform, to bring the costs way down. And for us to break even and make money, that’s the exact same thing.”
Ford has struggled in the EV market so far. It lost $2.2 billion in the first half of 2025 and $12 billion over the last two and a half years, per The New York Times.
Farley called the investment the company’s “most radical change” since the Model T, which revolutionized the industry and made Ford the foundation of Detroit’s Big 3. He said a reimagined assembly tree branched assembly line, which will start with the midsize truck, will help the legacy automaker out-innovate its competitors.
Doug Field, Ford’s EV chief, said the truck’s other big innovation will be a smaller battery. Ford’s design team says the smaller battery size will allow for more comfort but will also reduce the overall cost of the vehicle.
“Compared to a generation one electrical vehicle, we can get the same range with a third less battery,” Doug Field, Ford’s EV chief, said. “Are we going to compete for labor to make batteries? No, but if we use our brains to have a third smaller battery, we can compete.”
Ford said the truck will have new features like a drunk, but still have a traditional truck bed in the back. Farley also boasted that the truck will have the capacity to power a house for six days.
” You don’t need a generator,” he said. “You just buy this truck.”
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