ford motors announcing a new slate of initiatives this morning
aimed at fast tracking its electric vehicle goals. Plans
to eke out two million TVs by 2026. The
automaker is leveraging new battery and raw material sourcing plans
, aiming to get a leg up in the highly
competitive landscape. Well, joining me now is lisa
drake vice president of E V industrialization at the ford
model, a unit that is the E V unit
within ford and lisa. It's good to see you
, how is this announcement going to help forward achieve
its electric vehicle goals? Well, thanks for having
me, Kristen, you know, we're really excited
this morning to finally give a bit of a peek
behind the curtain, so to speak on our plans
to get to 600,000 TVs in 23 and then two
million and 26 and underpinning all of that is battery
cells. You know, you have to have the
battery cell manufacturing capacity to build that type of volume
. And we were very happy to announce, we've
secured 100% of those battery cell contracts. We have
great suppliers, LG energy solutions sK on and then
we announced today C A T L, one of
the largest battery suppliers in the world, Will be
supplying us a new technology called LFP and then beyond
that, moving into two million units were starting to
now even scale even further, we're going deeper in
the raw material value chain were direct sourcing things like
lithium and nickel um, and we're adding even more
battery cell capacity with other strategic relationships. How were
you able to make this? 100 proc percent secure
, um, battery, uh, input a reality
lisa. I mean a lot of commodities and components
are very hard to come by these days. Certainly
as the world continues to grapple with Covid as well
as Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Well, I'll
tell you, it really is on the back of
really great reception to our products. You know,
these suppliers believed in our plan because they saw the
demand we created by the F 1 50 lightning,
you know, they know, we know trucks and
now we know trucks even better with the new E
. V. That we just launched uh, and
then the Maki, you know, it was a
great success when it launched a year ago. We
can't build enough of them. And I think,
I think these raw material and the cell suppliers really
see that they see the demand, they see the
commitment from ford and frankly they also want a trusted
partner. They know that when ford comes to the
table will stand behind, you know, the deals
that we're making, um, and we want to
help them to through our environmental and social governance commitments
. You know, we're there to do this together
as a partner and I think they feel that Well
, your company Alisa earlier this week unveiling a$109,000
F150 wrapped, er, I know that's part of
your slate of new vehicles coming to market, we
expected next summer. What other electric vehicles are on
the horizon from Ford? Well, I can't announce
that today Kristen but you know, we already have
three that are just amazing successes. You know,
I mentioned the F 1 50 lightning in the Mach
E but we also have the E transit, you
know, we're the commercial leader in the United States
, we have over 50% of the market and now
that we've electrified this product, we see the demand
just skyrocketing and we're excited to add more capacity for
that product to. We did see a report yesterday
, Lisa Bloomberg reporting that Ford is planning to cut
about 8000 jobs here in the coming weeks in order
to fund its Evie investments. Can you confirm that
for us and how is that going to help the
company focused on building out its EV capacity? Yeah
, we're not going to comment on that speculation.
You know, I will say that, you know
, making a transformation like we're talking about is incredibly
difficult and we know that we have to be much
more competitive on our structural cost and and that will
be part of the plan. We have to be
able to compete with some of these best in class
companies in this space and those are part of the
targets that we set internally for our team. Another
question that I have is E. V. S
do tend to run more expensive than traditional gas powered
vehicles. We are seeing a bit of an economic
slowdown right now and certainly higher prices lisa. So
for american buyers out there, what would you tell
them as to why they should give an electric vehicle
a good look versus a traditional gas powered car?
Well, I think the first thing I'd say is
that in some cases the total cost of ownership is
, is lower. I mean, the purchase price
initially might be a bit higher, but depending on
where gas prices go, you're going to see,
you know, over time, the ability to recover
that value through total cost of ownership. That's especially
true in our commercial vehicle fleet. You know,
the way they use those vehicles and E V lends
itself much better to a commercial vehicle. That may
be a traditional ice engine would especially for certain use
cases. Uh, not to mention it's the right
thing to do for the environment. You know,
as we march towards decarbonization the planet. This will
be the way the industry goes and the demand is
showing that, you know, we actually can't build
enough of the E. V. S right now
that we have between the Mach E and the F
1 50 lightning were sold out. So I think
that customers are actually telling us that this is actually
the product choice that they want And let's walk through
some of these numbers here for planning to deliver 600,000
electric vehicles By late next year, ELISA and then
two million electric vehicles by 2026. So I think
that would indicate you're right. That certainly the demand
. Is there? What is the investment in the
heavy infrastructure, these charging stations to make this a
reality? You know, I think you're seeing that
time over time More and more announcements are coming out
about this infrastructure development and you know, it's not
just about people tend to talk about the number of
chargers that they have. It's really not about the
numbers, it's about where they are. Are they
in the right spots? Are they working when the
customer gets there? Can we give the customers advanced
notice through our embedded systems and the digital part of
the E. V experience and which ones are open
. Can you reserve one? So, I think
we're going to get smarter and smarter as we as
we move and gain momentum in this space and make
that experience so much more better for the customer.
All right lisa drake, vice president of Evie industrialization
at Ford model E the electric vehicle unit of ford
Motors, Elissa, Congratulations on the announcement this morning
and thanks so much for coming on cheddar news