AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)05/28 Report--

Jim Farley, Ford's chief executive, told the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Finance Summit (Morgan Stanley Sustainable Finance Summit) on May 25 that the company's biggest competitor in electric vehicles was not GM or Toyota, but Chinese electric carmakers, which listed BYD, Geely, Great Wall, Changan and SAIC as "winners" for Chinese carmakers.

Asked which company did well in electric cars, Farley said, "I like BYD." Fully vertical integration, positive and enterprising. Very impressive companies, they are always committed to the development of electric vehicles. " He also pointed out that compared with the US lithium-ion battery industry standard, BYD's lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery technology has an advantage, "this is a better battery, basically no fire risk, and the charging cycle is twice as long as lithium-ion battery."

To beat Chinese car companies, Mr Farley says, "either we have a very unique brand and we think we can rely on our brand to do that, or we have to beat them in cost". But if Chinese car companies are five times the size of yours, how do you beat them in cost?

Since it announced the suspension of fuel vehicles in April 2022, BYD has come to the fore in the domestic automobile market by relying on new energy vehicles, surpassing Tesla to become the world's largest new energy vehicle manufacturer, and surpassing FAW-Volkswagen to end the history of joint ventures monopolizing the Chinese market for more than 20 years.

In this context, BYD began to accelerate the layout of overseas markets. In July 2022, BYD held a brand conference in Tokyo to announce its official entry into the Japanese passenger car market. In September 2022, BYD held an European new energy passenger car conference to launch Han EV, Tang EV and Yuan PLUS models to the European market, and debuted at the Paris Motor Show in October of the same year. In November 2022, BYD entered Brazil and held a press conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to launch the Song PLUS DM-i and Yuan PLUS models. In January 2023, BYD officially launched three electric models: ATTO3 (Yuan Plus overseas version), Dolphin and Seal in Japan.

BYD's crazy layout of overseas markets has also made other overseas carmakers aware of the crisis, and even Musk, who complained about BYD earlier, began to admit, "that was many years ago, and their cars are very competitive now."

In the face of the offensive of Chinese electric car manufacturers, Ford's uncompetitive electric vehicle products appear to be powerless. In February, Ford announced that it would invest $3.5 billion (23.9 billion yuan) to build a new energy vehicle battery plant in Michigan in partnership with Chinese new energy company Ningde Times. Ford said the plant is expected to employ 2500 workers. The plant is scheduled to start production in 2026 and will be able to produce enough batteries for 400000 electric vehicles a year.

According to the plan, Ford electric vehicles will account for half of its global sales in 2030. To this end, from 2022 to 2026, Ford will invest more than $50 billion worldwide in the development and manufacture of electric vehicles and batteries, with the goal of producing 600000 electric vehicles by the end of 2023 and more than 2 million electric vehicles by the end of 2026.

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