During its second-quarter earnings call, Ford CEO and delivery man Jim Farley announced that the company would reveal its long-awaited cheap EV platform on August 11. And as we predicted when we first wrote about the project a year ago, Farley claims, "This is a Model T moment for us at Ford." Massive overhyping, or the first hint that our world is about to change? I guess we'll find out at the unveiling event in Kentucky.
Ford has been searching for a while to compete with American upstart Tesla and get in on its EV (and stock price) action. Electrification has been a rough road for the Blue Oval; it took a $5 billion hit on EVs last year. To shift gears, Ford set up a "skunkworks" team to design a low-cost EV that would be profitable within 12 months of launch, but it's been mostly crickets from that team until now. Looks like we'll finally see what they've been up to. Farley, for one, seems pretty happy about their work.
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Charging Up The Battery (Plants)
Ford has also been building out a series of new battery plants, including twin plants in Kentucky and one in Michigan that can make lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. All of those seem like they might be directly tied to the new EV. The August 11 event will be in Kentucky, presumably at the twin plants (although Ford does have a truck plant in the state as well). The Wall Street Journal recently reported that one of the them was using half its space to make Nissan batteries instead, and the other wasn't even in operation at all. I'd bet that Farley will announce that the second plant will spin up to make batteries for the new platform.
The Michigan plant is an ambitious attempt to start making LFP batteries in America. Even though the technology was invented in the U.S., it's been commercialized and deployed at scale by Chinese companies, part of the reason they are able to make such affordable EVs. LFP batteries don't quite have the capacity or power of a traditional lithium-ion battery (made with nickel, cobalt, and manganese), but they're cheaper and last longer, which most consumers care about more at the end of the day. Making them in America, with a supply chain not dependent on China, would be a massive leap forward for domestic electrics — even if some of the actual tech is licensed from Chinese company CATL.
Putting cheap batteries into a cheap electric platform makes complete sense; I wouldn't be shocked if that second Kentucky plant will be focused on manufacturing LFPs, too. If Ford can nail a reliable EV at less than $30,000, that really is a game-changer. Is it a Model T-level game-changer? That's a very high bar to clear. Then again, Tesla never did come out with its own cheap EV, so maybe Ford has a big opportunity here all to itself.
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