Apparently Ford will pass on building a battery factory....

[MontyFloyd]

Exactly. They did a "deep dive" and still came up clueless. Ford might be right in that if you sell less than 150K EVs a year, you probably don't need to make your own batteries or cells. But then they said Tesla is different because their whole product line is electrified. Bzzzzt! Wrong answer!

Tesla sold way more than 150K EVs in a SINGLE model last year. Ford could do the same. They just choose not to make something compelling enough for people to buy in large quantities.

The same kind of dismissal to Tesla as we saw in 2007 with the original iPhone

(I know, old post, fun to see it)

 

[CSFTN]

Updating old thread. Ford has announced they are building several battery factories, the first 2 with details are outside of Memphis TN and then another in KY. IIRC the press release was that these 2 plants will build enough batteries for 150K F150 Lightnings per year, and the Lightnings themselves will be assembled in the Western TN plant.

 

[Cosmacelf]

So, what changed? I think it was the massive pre order numbers for the Ford Lightning. Their executives live in such a bubble that they couldn’t believe a lot of people wanted EVs until their noses were rubbed into it and they couldn’t ignore it any longer. Talk about biases! They collectively must have had a brain hurt when they changed their minds about EVs.

You see this behavior all over the place. It’s why once dominant companies whither away and die rather than change. Their leadership just doesn’t believe the landscape is changing until it too late.

Not only big companies … a friend of mine once had a consumer cookware catalog order company. I told him early and often that they had to get a website and become an e-commerce company. It would have been relatively easy for them to do. He didn’t listen/understand/believe. And he was a software computer guy by training! I still shake my head about that one.

 

[RobDickinson]

If the update of EVs has surprised the tesla exec imagine what the Ford C team is feelng.

 

[uujjj2]

So, what changed? I think it was the massive pre order numbers for the Ford Lightning. Their executives live in such a bubble that they couldn’t believe a lot of people wanted EVs until their noses were rubbed into it and they couldn’t ignore it any longer. Talk about biases! They collectively must have had a brain hurt when they changed their minds about EVs.

You see this behavior all over the place. It’s why once dominant companies whither away and die rather than change. Their leadership just doesn’t believe the landscape is changing until it too late.

We don't know that their plans actually changed. It may only be they announced what they were already secretly planning. No point in announcing what you're doing to all your competitors until after all your competitors already figure it out.

Big companies know a lot more about what the competition is up to than the general public. Back in 2013 I was working on 64-bit ARM cores. And Qualcomm came out with a statement that they thought 64-bit processors in mobile phones were a bad idea. And my team at Nvidia knew that the Qualcomm exec was lying and that they had a 64-bit mobile processor less than a year from tapeout.

 

[Feathermerchan]

So did the SEC go after the lying exec?

 

[uujjj2]

So did the SEC go after the lying exec?

Careful. As Tesla/Elon fans we don't want to go there.