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Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor, the second largest US automaker, has visited China several times since the beginning of 2023, according to an article on the website of the Wall Street Journal. Chinese companies have taken a big lead in the electric car race. He sighed: "only when I came to China did I know that we had fallen behind."

After a visit to China, Ford CEO Jim Farley told Ford board member John Thornton that Chinese electric cars are moving at the speed of light. China's electric cars use AI and a host of other new technologies, while the United States can't find similar products. Chinese car companies are providing better products at low prices through an efficient industrial chain, and are rapidly occupying the market outside. At the same time, at the end of his visit to China, Jim Farley specially shipped electric cars of several Chinese brands, such as Xiaomi and ideal, to the headquarters in Michigan for company executives and directors to test-drive and study.

Indeed, with the rapid development of electric vehicles in China, traditional fuel vehicles have been unable to sell new energy vehicles, and joint ventures that mainly sell traditional fuel vehicles have seen a sharp decline in their market share in China compared with their peak. These include Ford's joint venture company Changan Ford in China. The former automobile giant Ford is also actively transforming in the face of the arrival of the new energy era, but cruelly, Ford's electric vehicle business has not only failed to become a new growth engine, but has become a black hole engulfing profits.

Ford reported that its electric vehicle business sold 26000 vehicles in the second quarter, with an average loss of $42300 (306000 yuan) per electric vehicle. A total of 36000 electric vehicles were sold in the first half of the year, with a loss of $69400 (503000 yuan) for each electric vehicle sold. Ford is trying to ease the situation by cutting costs, but these efforts are undoubtedly a drop in the bucket under the double blow of downward price pressure in the industry and a decline in wholesale volume. Ford expects losses in its electric car business to be between $5 billion and $5.5 billion in 2024.

Some analysts said that Ford's slow pace in the global transformation of new energy is due to its over-reliance on traditional fuel vehicles, especially in the Chinese market, where the fuel vehicle technology is relatively conservative and the three-cylinder model is not recognized. And the electric cars sold in the Chinese market are not satisfactory.

Of course, the development of electric vehicles does need a lot of financial support, whether it is technological research and development or the construction of energy supplement channels, especially for Chinese car companies. At present, although most Chinese new energy vehicle enterprises have excellent performance, but in fact, they are all selling cars at a loss, and only BYD and ideal cars make a profit. They prove that electric vehicles can indeed be profitable, when they reach a certain market size. However, Ford has gone further and further on the road of losing money, and under the background of unsatisfactory sales of electric cars, this undoubtedly casts a shadow over Ford's road of electric transformation.

In spite of this, Ford has not given up its pursuit of electrification. As the world's largest automobile market, China not only has a huge demand for new energy vehicles, but also has unprecedented government support. For Ford, this is both an opportunity and a challenge. For Ford, whether it can find its own position in the Chinese market, whether Ford can go against the current in the new energy tide, time will tell us.

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