China’s EV makers are our biggest rival, says Ford boss
Ford’s CEO Jim Farley has warned that Chinese manufacturers are the companies’ biggest rival in the EV space, not competitors like Toyota or General Motors (GM).
”I think we see the Chinese as the main competitor, not GM or Toyota,” Farley told the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Finance Summit, in comments first reported by Reuters this morning.
“The Chinese are going to be the powerhouse,” he added.
Farley highlighted the scale of production of Chinese manufacturers, leaving Ford with the choice of finding a distinctive brand or lowering its costs.
“But how do you beat them on cost if their scale is five times yours?” he said, adding that Chinese automakers are selling “in high volume in Europe.”
China has emerged as a leading force in the EV race and global automakers have been wrestling with manufacturers such as the Warren Buffet backed-BYD and Hangzhou-based Geely, who are targeting expansion in Europe.
Industry bosses have voiced concerns over the pace of Chinese automakers production, and their ability to produce high quality vehicles at cheap prices.
At the Financial Times’s Future of the Car summit earlier this month, Nissan chief Makoto Uchida said Chinese manufacturers’ speed of production was putting pressure on Japanese and global carmakers, with Chinese production at levels “much faster than we expected before.”
In January, the boss of Vauxhall-owner Stellantis , Carlos Tavares, warned of a “terrible fight” between Chinese and European automakers as they expand in the continent.
BYD – one of the fastest growing brands in the automotive industry – is now the third largest battery electric vehicle (BEV) player in Europe and may exceed 1m units annually by 2024, according to analysts from Bloomberg Intelligence.