The demand for electric vehicles is around two to three times the amount expected by Ford, CEO Jim Farley told Automotive News. In response, Ford is doubling its electric vehicle annual volume projection to 600,000 units globally by the end of this year, according to the report.
“Demand is two to three times what we expected, and so that capacity had to be doubled; probably tripled if we could, but we can’t,” Farley told Automotive News. That said, the full-sized pick-up truck remains a large part of Ford’s portfolio in North America, and addition to the roll-out of electric vehicles, Ford will also be introducing an all-new pick-up truck platform.
Future full-sized trucks to emerge with this new platform will be made at a new manufacturing plant to be constructed beginning next year, and this will be the Blue Oval’s fist new assembly plant in decades, according to the report. “We think it’s going to be incredibly high-volume. What I know for sure that we have to build more of? Battery plants,” said Farley, implying that the new pick-up platform will accommodate full electrification.
Farley did not disclose further details regarding the new full-sized pick-up truck platform or the models it will underpin, though it appears that Ford’s customer base for these products are unlikely to be foregoing the large, internal combustion-powered models for load-hauling duties.
“We have a lot of rural customers at Ford that a lot of other brands don’t have. We have Super Duty customers who do heavy-duty towing; [such as with] horse trailers, and those who are in the energy business who are towing big-time loads over very long distances. It’s had for me to imagine that all those customers will go electric in the next 10 years,” Farley said.
As for electrification at present, Ford’s own full-sized pick-up truck range has brought its fully electric offering with the F-150 Lightning that was unveiled in May this year, based on the same aluminium alloy construction as on the internal combustion-powered F-150 range.
The typical Ford truck customer in North America aren’t completely EV-averse, however. “They’re actually just as interested in the technology as anyone, it’s just that their use case is different [from] how we’ve designed the vehicles so far,” Farley noted.
Where trucks and electrification are concerned, the feedback Ford is hearing that customers like the idea of the Pro Power Onboard on the F-150 Lightning, that can supply electricity to power tools and household appliances with a total output of up to 7.2 kW in the higher-specification variants. At its launch, the F-150 Lightning was “targeted” for a range of 480 km with the larger of two available batteries.
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