Ford CEO drives Chinese electric car for six months 'and I don't want to give it up'
10/24/2024 08:42 PM
Boss of US car giant reveals his daily driver for the past six months has been a Xiaomi SU7 – and has publicly heaped praise on it.
Ford CEO Jim Farley has admitted to driving a Chinese-made electric car – and loving it – as his daily driver for the past six months.
Speaking to the Electric Everything Show podcast, Mr Farley said he'd been driving a Xiaomi SU7 – a hot-selling battery-electric sedan currently not sold in Australia – on United States (US) home soil, with Ford purchasing one after it went on sale in China in March 2024.
"I don't like talking about the competition so much but I drive the Xiaomi – we flew one from Shanghai to Chicago and I've been driving it for six month now and I don't want to give it up," Mr Farley told Electric Everything Show podcast host Robert Llewellyn.
The SU7 is the first showroom model from Xiaomi – the world's third-largest smartphone maker – in contrast to Ford, which made its first Model A 121 years ago.
Only weeks before Xiaomi launched its first car, US company Apple – the world's second-largest smartphone maker behind Samsung – cancelled its plans for an electric car having spent an estimated $US1 billion ($AU1.51 billion) every year for a decade.
"Everyone's talking about the Apple car … but the Xiaomi car, which now exists and it's fantastic – they sell 10,000 or 20,000 a month, they're sold out for six months," Farley said.
"That is an industry juggernaut and a consumer brand much stronger than car companies."
Both Ford and Xiaomi have posted losses on electric cars – with Ford losing the equivalent of $US130,000 ($AU195,850) per vehicle and the Chinese brand $US9200 ($AU13,860) on each XU7 it sells.
Yet unlike Ford's electric division – which is working on a cut-price Tesla rival – analysts predict Xiaomi will turn a profit from its car business by the end of 2024, helped by the launch of its second model, the MX11 SUV.
It's rare a car maker comments on a rival product – yet alone its global CEO giving an emerging car maker high praise – yet when Electric Everything Show podcast host Llewellyn politely tries to pull the Ford company boss to another topic, Farley continued.
"I’m fine to [talk about a competitor] because I think this was all something I processed – we processed as a [Ford] team – and we were not naive to, we did look the other way."
In explaining the competition with Chinese-made electric vehicles, Farley explained his background working at Toyota in the US – during which brands from Japan expanded significantly – taught him a valuable lesson.
"The 'Detroit Three' [Ford, General Motors and Chrysler] never really had a plan [to compete with Japanese car makers]," the Ford chief admitted.
"There was a huge social cost in the Midwest of the US for the success of Toyota – so many jobs were lost, including many people in my family," he said.
"We're not going to miss this one [Chinese growth]. Bill Ford [executive chairman of Ford] and I shook hands or embraced or whatever metaphor you want to use and we said – this one, we're going to have to get it right."
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