Three years ago, Ford announced a plan to invest $10 billion in its electric vehicle program, doubling its ante up to that time. With that announcement, the automaker also promised to launch 40 new electrified models by 2022.
Now, the Dearborn-based company is adding to its pledge, announcing that it will invest $22 billion in electric models and $7 billion in autonomous driving, all by 2025. Ford’s 2018 announcement, other manufacturers have made similar commitments, including big rival General Motors (GM). Recently, GM announced investments of $27 billion by 2025 and plans to introduce 30 electric models worldwide by 2025.
While Ford is following GM's lead in terms of the amount of funds committed, it has not gone as far as its main competitor, which has promised that it will no longer sell gasoline-powered vehicles as of 2035. That's still a long way off and we could see Ford make a similar commitment in the next few years. In the meantime, though, Ford is saying that the majority of its future vehicles will be electric and that some of its models will be equipped with hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains.
And let's not forget that Ford is working on other projects, for instance its association with the fledgling Rivian company, in which the century-old car manufacturer has invested $500 million. In 2019, the two companies announced a plan to assemble a vehicle using the Rivian platform. However, in 2020, a project that would have seen an electric Lincoln model built with Rivian's technology was cancelled, in part because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ford is also preparing an all-electric version of its F-150 pickup, let's not forget. In short, we'll see a lot of new electrical innovations at Ford over the next few years, as elsewhere in the industry.
We’ve said it before, the 2020s will be the decade of the big industry shift to electric mobility. Seemingly not a week goes by that doesn’t provide more evidence of that.
