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Ford's CEO had an EV wake-up call after tearing apart cars from Tesla and its rivals in China.
Speaking on an upcoming episode of "Office Hours: Business Edition," Jim Farley said the "shocking" realization of how far ahead Elon Musk's automaker and China's EV upstarts were pushed him to overhaul the company.
"I was very humbled when we took apart the first Model 3 Tesla and started to take apart the Chinese vehicles. When we took them apart, it was shocking what we found," Farley told host Monica Langley.
The Detroit executive said Ford's Mustang Mach-E had around 1.6km more electrical wiring than the Tesla, adding extra weight to the car and requiring a much bigger and more expensive battery.
Taking apart rival vehicles is a common practice in the automotive industry. The CEO of smartphone-maker-turned-EV-upstart Xiaomi revealed in September that his team bought three Tesla Model Ys and ripped them apart to study every component.
Farley, who has led Ford since 2020, said the teardowns convinced him the company had to change to match its new rivals.
In 2022, Farley spun out Ford's EV operations into a new division called Model E. The division lost more than $5 billion in 2024 and is projected to face a similar hit this year, but Farley said he doesn't regret the move.
"I knew it was going to be brutal business-wise," he said on the podcast, adding that he thought it was important for Ford's EV operations to be accountable to investors.
"My ethos is, take on the hardest problems as fast as you can and do it sometimes in public because you'll solve them quicker that way," Farley said.
China's EV revolution
Farley has regularly warned that China's EV giants pose an existential threat to Ford and other Western automakers.
In June, he described Chinese EVs as "far superior" to their Western counterparts, and last month he said Chinese brands like BYD were "completely dominating" the global EV landscape.
Around 50% of new car sales in China are electric, compared to about 10% in the US.
Chinese automakers have outpaced most of their Western rivals by offering a range of high-tech electric models with affordable price tags — and now many of them are expanding overseas, rapidly taking market share in Europe and developing markets.
Farley has been sounding the alarm about the rise of Chinese EVs, but he's also a fan. The Ford CEO said last year he'd been driving an electric sedan built by Xiaomi for six months, and "didn't want to give it up."
"EVs are exploding in China," said Farley on the "Office Hours" podcast, adding that the Chinese government had put its "foot on the economic scale" in favor of battery-powered vehicles.
"We can't walk away from EVs, not just for the US, but if we want to be a global company, I'm not going to just cede that to the Chinese," Farley said.
Despite this, Ford's EV push continues to face a bumpy road in the US.
The Blue Oval reported record electric vehicle sales in the third quarter as buyers rushed to snap up vehicles before the end of the federal tax credit, but Farley told investors in an analyst call last month that he expected only around 5% of the US market to be electric in the near term as EV demand slows.
"We now know that the EV market in the US is totally different than we thought," said Farley on the "Office Hours" podcast, adding that US consumers are more interested in affordable electric models than a "$70-80,000 electric vehicle."
To meet that new market, Ford is once again shifting its EV strategy. In August, Farley unveiled a new EV production line that he said would help Ford beat BYD and Tesla.
The first vehicle to roll off the retooled production line will be a $30,000 midsize truck, which is expected to launch in 2027.
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