Ford is increasing its investment in electric and autonomous vehicles to $ 29 billion, the company’s top executives said in a call on Thursday. The carmaker has previously pledged to spend $ 11.5 billion on electrifying its vehicle management by 2022. Now Ford says it will spend double that amount, while extending the timeline to 2025.
The automaker spends $ 7 billion on autonomous vehicles and $ 22 billion on electric vehicles. That $ 22 billion contains $ 7 billion that the company has spent since 2016.
Ford said most of the vehicles it plans to manufacture will be battery-powered electric vehicles, but the company also has hybrids and plug-in hybrid models that also have traditional internal combustion engines. The company launched an all-electric Transit van last year and plans to unveil an electric version of its top-selling F-150 pickup later this year.
Ford’s new CEO Jim Farley cites the company’s increased investment as a ‘more aggressive’ plan to place the country’s oldest carmaker as a leader in the future of mobility and transport. Farley cited Ford’s recent announcement that it will work with Google to integrate the tech giant’s Android software into ‘millions’ of vehicles starting in 2023, as representative of the kind of transactions involved in Ford’s hub in a more digital future.
The increased investment is meant to convince those on Wall Street who have rushed over Ford’s ability to catch up with Tesla, which was the only carmaker to successfully build an EV business over the past few years. Ford is keeping pace with other old-fashioned carmakers such as GM and Volkswagen, which just launched the expected Mustang Mach-E to customers late last year – although a matter of quality investigation delayed hundreds of additional deliveries last month.
Most of the major automakers have said in the past year that they plan to turn to electrical equipment. Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz (Daimler itself will soon be renamed Mercedes-Benz), said it will produce electrified versions of all its cars by 2022. Volvo has announced that gas production is starting to phase out with gas only. in 2019, while the Volkswagen Group will make everything electric in some form by 2030. And China’s growing prominence in the automotive market, in addition to the country’s restrictions on the production of fossil fuel vehicles, is certainly putting pressure on the entire industry to become electric.
Ford is not even the only carmaker to significantly increase its bet on electricity. Late last year, GM said it would spend $ 27 billion on electric and autonomous vehicles by 2025 – up from the $ 20 billion it announced ahead of the COVID 19 pandemic.