Ford To Focus On Electric Vehicles And Reducing Battery Costs

The manufacturer estimates that EVs will account for 40 percent of its global volume by 2030

• Ford shares its new Ford+ plan during the brand’s Capital Markets Day event.

• Future strategies focus on a new business face for commercial buyers, a growing EV lineup and connected services.

• New scalable EV architecture in the works to support upcoming models across the globe.

• Ford is working on its own battery tech to cater to both personal and commercial vehicle models.

• New models to get over-the-air updates to improve functionalities and in some cases, offer new features over time.

During its capital markets day presentation, Ford outlined its forward-looking strategies under the Ford+ plan. The key takeaways for the passenger vehicle segment centred around all-electric models and customer experiences via connected technology services.

The American automotive giant has already revealed pure-electric versions of its two most popular offerings: the Mustang Mach-e sporty SUV and recently the F-150 Lightning pickup. Within a week of its unveiling, the electric pickup has recorded 70,000 pre-orders. Ford estimates that fully electric vehicles will account for 40 percent of its global vehicle volume, passenger and commercial vehicles combined, by 2030. There are no details on the market-wise plan for this electrification but there seems to be an immediate focus on the model lineups that are offered primarily in North America and Europe. 

Ford will continue to invest more capital on electrification across the manufacturing process. That includes investing in developing more efficient battery technology, offering a range of EV batteries of its own and forming a joint venture for manufacturing cells and arrays in the U.S. The manufacturer also acknowledges the needs for different types of batteries for different vehicles in its lineup that are used for various purposes. It also estimates to reduce battery costs by 40 percent by 2025.

It is working on scalable EV architectures that can share various powertrain and battery components amongst themselves. Ford shared one such modular platform that can offer new rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive models in the shapes of utility vehicles, off-roaders, pickups and family SUVs till 2030. For compact and mid-size EV models in Europe, Ford has partnered with Volkswagen to use their MEB platform. 

The Ford+ plan also focuses on delivering vehicles that are capable of receiving over-the-air system updates. With its new range of EVs, these updates will be capable of improving the overall vehicle experience and add features (in terms of range, performance and driver assist technologies) as time goes on which means the car is even better tomorrow than what it was when someone bought it. The carmaker also intends to deepen customer relationship and retention via connected services.

This could be introduced across its model range, offering different levels of improvements depending on the vehicle type. Ford estimates that it will have more OTA-enabled vehicles on the road than Tesla by mid-2022 and around 33 million of them by 2028. 

Ford’s North American model lineup is a lot different from what is available here. The brand already offers FordPass connected car tech as standard across its models in India. While updated versions of the EcoSport, Endeavour and Figo could expand the functions available with FordPass, electrified Fords for India are not expected to arrive anytime soon.