DETROIT- Ford engine will be a partner Tesla on charging initiatives for its current and future electric vehicles in an unusual pairing between two rivals, CEOs of automakers announced on Thursday.
Under the agreement, current Ford owners will have access to greater than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in the US and Canada starting early next 12 months via the adapter. And Ford’s next generation of electric vehicles – expected by mid-decade – will feature a Tesla charging plug, allowing owners of Ford vehicles to charge at Tesla charging stations without an adapter, making Ford one among the primary automakers to explicitly go browsing.
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The initiatives were announced by Ford CEO Jim Farley and Tesla CEO Elon Musk during a live audio discussion on Twitter Spaces. They arrive as Ford tries to ramp up production of its all-electric vehicles in an try and catch up – or someday surpass – Tesla’s sales in this segment.
While Tesla continues to dominate the electric vehicle sector by far, last 12 months Ford ranked second in sales of all-electric vehicles in the US with 61,575 electric vehicles sold.
Farley said the corporate is “totally committed” to a single US charging protocol that features Tesla’s plug-in port, often called NACS. It’s unclear whether Ford’s next-generation electric vehicles will maintain the charging ports present on current models, often called CCS. A Ford spokesman said the corporate had “this selection available to us, but no news to share today.”
A separate Ford spokesperson told CNBC that the fare prices “will be competitive in the marketplace.” The businesses will reveal further details closer to the expected 2024 release date.
Jim Farley and Elon Musk
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Tesla previously discussed opening up its private network to other electric vehicles. White House officials announced in February that Tesla had committed to opening 7,500 of its charging stations by the tip of 2024 to drivers of non-Tesla electric vehicles. Previously, the corporate’s chargers in the US were mostly utilized by Tesla’s electric cars and were compatible with them.
In a Tesla shareholder in the primary quarter deck, the corporate revealed that it has roughly 45,000 Supercharger connectors worldwide at 4,947 Supercharger stations. The corporate doesn’t disclose chargers by country or device revenue. Includes revenue from charging stations in the “services and other” segment.
The Twitter Spaces event between Farley and Musk on Thursday marks the newest interaction between the 2 executives who share a singular rivalry. Each has expressed admiration for the opposite, though their corporations are in direct competition.
Ford notably beat Tesla in the pickup truck segment by starting production of its F-150 Lightning, an electric version of its ever-popular trucks, in April 2022. Ford also heavily compared the Tesla Model Y to the Mustang Mach-E crossover and followed Tesla in a price cut electric crossovers.
But Musk, who runs Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, has repeatedly lauded Ford as a historic American company, praising its ability to avoid bankruptcy unlike rivals in various cities. General Motors and Chrysler through the Great Recession.
Such flattery was commonplace in Thursday’s interview: “Working with Elon and his team, I’m really enthusiastic about our industry and Ford customers,” Farley said. Musk later reciprocated these feelings: “It’s an honor to work with an amazing company like Ford,” he said.
Farley poked Musk a bit by asking concerning the long-delayed new edition of the corporate’s first vehicle, the Roadster. Musk teased a Fall 2017 Roadster refresh. It promised a variety of 620 miles on a single charge and three motors, amongst other features.
Today, he repeated on Thursday, the new edition of the Roadster remains to be not even fully designed.
Earlier on Thursday, Farley praised Tesla for its charging network on the Morgan Stanley conference, saying that while Ford has created its own charging products for its industrial customers, automakers should consider working together on charging infrastructure for most people.
“It seems completely ridiculous that we’ve an infrastructure problem and we will not even agree on what plug to use,” Farley said, noting that Tesla’s charging plug is different from the one utilized by other automakers. “I feel step one is to work together in a way we have not, possibly with recent electric automobile brands and traditional automobile corporations.”