Ford CEO Jim Farley is focused on quality at the brand, but making better trucks and SUVs isn’t his only priority. The brand’s redemption shot at electric vehicles, the Fathom, is due very soon. And Farley does not sound entirely confident.
This comes even after learning big lessons from its Chinese competition.
Low-Buck Fathom Is A Very Big Deal
Ford Fathom prototypeFord
The Ford Fathom electric pickup isn’t quite a moonshot, but the automaker’s aims are nearly as high. The upcoming Universal Electric Vehicle platform and the $30,000 Fathom built on it are Ford’s stars-and-stripes response to cheap EVs from China.
It is set to launch next year, so what’s the status? “We haven’t landed the plane on mass production of UEV yet,” he told Automotive News and the recent Automotive News Congress.
Farley hinted strongly that the pickup could be delayed. “It’s going to be a heck of an effort to launch this at scale, at cost, on time,” he said.
Ford knows pickups. Its F-Series trucks have been America’s top sellers since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But it has had to reimagine what it knows about building vehicles and especially electric ones to match the rapid-fire development and low costs from China.
Farley gave an example of what the automaker has done. He said that Ford estimated a benchmarked BYD EV would have a 20% cost advantage over the battery in the Fathom. To match that, Ford changed how it built gearboxes, inverters, and motors to let it use a smaller battery than BYD with the same range.
Though Farley has long spoken about how superior Chinese EVs are to American ones, Chinese automakers might not be Ford’s first competition for the Fathom. Upstart electric truck builder Slate, with its sub-$25,000 electric pickup, could pose the first challenge to Ford’s truck.
The ultra-low-cost Slate is cheaper than the Ford, and it should hit the market first. But it’s also ultra-basic, including manual windows and an unpainted plastic body. The newness of the brand and its lack of dealers compared with Ford might help Ford in fleet sales, but those factors may have a smaller impact with cost-conscious consumers.
Has Ford Finally Solved Quality Woes?
A mechanic works under the hood of a Ford F-150Ford
For Ford, which has faced record-breaking numbers of recalls in recent years, quality will also be key to the Fathom launch. Farley told the conference that he believes it has turned its quality around and that it will stay better this time.
Farley came from Toyota 19 years ago. Since joining Ford, “I saw Ford fall in and out of love with quality four times,” he said. This time he thinks it will stick because “I don’t see any comfort at Ford at any level with what we’ve achieved in JD Power’s IQS,” he told Automotive News. “Across the whole board, I just see a team absolutely dedicated to not disappointing the customer, and I haven’t seen that really since I left Toyota.”
CarBuzz Insight – Why This Matters:
Bill Ford (left) And Jim Farley at Ford Mustang launch eventFord
Ford has made the Fathom a very big deal. If it arrives late and overpriced, it could be another electric vehicle failure for the company and mean billions more in investments that didn’t pay off. Last year, Ford said it took a $19.5 billion hit as it scaled back its EV strategy, and that’s before this vehicle. Ford, and Farley, need this one to be a hit.
If the company can’t pull it off, it could fall another model generation – five years – behind competition from China. Competition that isn’t slowing down and that would love to eat Ford’s lunch on the world stage, but especially in the US.
Source: Automotive News
