In early 2024, Ford became the first car company to get access to Tesla's US Supercharger network of EV charging stations. Now, in an interview, Blue Oval CEO Jim Farley has explained how it happened. Ford getting Supercharger access was the result of Farley taking an electric road trip of his own.
It was a trip that helped give him more insight into the real experiences of EV road-tripping, and frankly, some of the frustrations of using an EV charging infrastructure still very much in development. Not to mention some of his growing concerns about electric vehicles and the US auto industry's worries about competition from China.
'So I Called Elon, Out Of The Blue'
Ford
In a recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Farley spoke about an electric road trip he took to California with his son. "It became pretty clear that we had a big problem with our charging networks," he said. "So, after that trip I called Elon – out of the blue, I never met him or anything, and I was like, ‘is there any way you’d share your supercharger network with Ford?’" The answer, evidently, was yes.
Musk had first started opening Supercharger access to other brands' vehicles in 2020. He posted about it on Twitter at the time, and later in 2021 said that it would be open to other brands by the end of the year.
The official rollout took much longer. Years longer. Ford made its announcement in May 2023 that Ford owners would be able to use the network of stations in spring 2024. Ford even sent out adapters to customers to bridge the divide between the CCS ports on the EVs and the NACS plugs on the Supercharger stations.
Chinese Automakers 'Like Japan On Steroids'
Xiaomi
Farley was also asked about the rise of automakers from China. If he saw similarities to the rise of Japanese automakers in the US in the 1980s. "Oh I think it’s exactly the same thing but it’s on steroids," he said.
"They have enough capacity in China with existing factories to serve the entire North American market and put us all out of business. Japan never had that, so this is a completely different level of risk for our industry," he said.
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This article originally appeared CarBuzz and is republished here with permission.
