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Ford CEO says taking apart Tesla and Chinese EVs was ‘shocking’ and pushed him to shake up the automaker
Taking apart Tesla and Chinese EVs was a wake-up call for Ford’s CEO.
Jim Farley told the “Office Hours: Business Edition” podcast that it spurred him to overhaul the automaker.
Farley said the rapid rise of China’s EV companies means Ford can’t afford to “walk away from EVs.”
Ford’s CEO had an EV wake-up call after tearing apart cars from Tesla and its rivals in China.
Speaking on an upcoming episode of the “Office Hours: Business Edition” podcast, Jim Farley said the “shocking” realization of how far ahead Elon Musk’s automaker and China’s EV upstarts were pushed him to overhaul the company.
“I was very humbled when we took apart the first Model 3 Tesla and started to take apart the Chinese vehicles. When we took them apart, it was shocking what we found,” Farley told host Monica Langley in the interview, which is set to be released on Wednesday.
The Detroit executive said Ford’s Mustang Mach-E had around 1.6km more electrical wiring than the Tesla, adding extra weight to the car and requiring a much bigger and more expensive battery.
Taking apart rival vehicles is a common practice in the automotive industry. The CEO of smartphone-maker-turned-EV-upstart Xiaomi revealed in September that his team bought three Tesla Model Ys and ripped them apart to study every component.
Farley, who has led Ford since 2020, said the teardowns convinced him the company had to change to match its new rivals.
In 2022, Farley spun out Ford’s EV operations into a new division called Model E. The division lost more than $5 billion in 2024 and is projected to face a similar hit this year, but Farley said he doesn’t regret the move.
“I knew it was going to be brutal business-wise,” he said on the podcast, adding that he thought it was important for Ford’s EV operations to be accountable to investors.
“My ethos is, take on the hardest problems as fast as you can and do it sometimes in public because you’ll solve them quicker that way,” Farley said.
Farley has regularly warned that China’s EV giants pose an existential threat to Ford and other Western automakers.
In June, he described Chinese EVs as “far superior” to their Western counterparts, and last month he said Chinese brands like BYD were “completely dominating” the global EV landscape.
Around 50% of new car sales in China are electric, compared to about 10% in the US.
Chinese automakers have outpaced most of their Western rivals by offering a range of high-tech electric models with affordable price tags — and now many of them are expanding overseas, rapidly taking market share in Europe and developing markets.
