"Ford CEO Jim Farley said he was struck by a "shocking" discovery when digging into competitors' vehicles, and it spurred him into taking action that would help the legacy carmaker compete with the likes of Tesla and Chinese upstarts. When taking apart competitors' vehicles, as is standard practice in the automobile industry, Farley said the company found Ford's Mustang Mach-E had about 1.6 km, or nearly a mile, more wiring than a Tesla Model 3."
"The legacy carmaker, known for ushering in the age of the automobile with its Model T, first launched in 1908, has struggled to compete in recent years, especially with the pace of innovation in electric vehicles being led by Chinese automakers. In 2022, the CEO created a new division called Model E, in part to help Ford innovate on electric vehicles. The division lost more than $5 billion in 2024,"
"but Farley noted on the podcast he knew diving into EV innovation was going to be "brutal business-wise." "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, emphasizing the need for shareholders to have insight into Ford's EV operations. Still, EV sales in the U.S. have jumped in 2025,"
Jim Farley discovered that competitor electric vehicles, including Tesla and Chinese models, used notably less wiring and simpler architectures than Ford's Mustang Mach-E. The wiring and design differences prompted a strategic push to accelerate EV innovation and competitiveness. Ford created the Model E division in 2022 to focus on electric-vehicle development. Model E recorded losses exceeding $5 billion in 2024, and leadership acknowledged the EV transition would be a brutal business challenge. Farley promoted tackling hard problems quickly and publicly and emphasized shareholder insight into EV operations as U.S. EV sales rose in 2025.
Read at Fortune
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