Live on Bloomberg TV

00:00Talk to us about how what you're unveiling today and the latest with Ford Pro will really make a difference in the everyday operations of commercial customers like a wine grower in Sonoma. I think so. You know Ford's been number one in vehicle commercial vehicles for like decades. And now we're going to do something different. We're going to go into distributing and actually software and physical services that we haven't really been in before. So that's a big turn for us for our customers. They have been begging for this for a long time. They want it services. Are we talking about so financing. We don't really offer comprehensive financing of charging charging itself. So the new electric lightning and the E transit we're going to offer a comprehensive charging just like Elon did with Tesla. So we're going to offer our equivalent of the Supercharger network with with depot charging commercial customers use telematics so they can track the vehicles do dynamic routing check this servicing whether the drivers are operating them efficiently all sorts of service and then physical services we can now predict before the vehicle fails. And so the customer can get service done before the vehicle goes off the road. And the vision is not just to sell this to commercial customers but individual car buyers down the line. How much in terms of a percentage of sales let's say do you think services will contribute to Ford's business in 20 30. Well I would say maybe half of you include physical repair and upgrade of the facility of the vehicle. Absolutely. A huge growth opportunity for us because we've only made margin on the vehicle itself and may maybe the best we do in commercial is retained 10 percent of the customers after warranty for service. So if we get 20 30 40 percent loyalty and service because of these services we offer on physical repair. It's really incredible upside for us. We'll start with pro. We're already connecting all the vehicles on the retail side. But the pro customers are more willing to pay for those services. Now you're gonna need chips to power all of this. President Biden the administration just said the chip crisis is going to last at least to the end of the year. Give us an update on what you're seeing in the supply chain. Do you still see shortages. If so where or do you see some relief. Not really. Actually I wish I could tell you there was relief in sight. But fourth quarter was very difficult. In fact we started to see new kind of supply chain problems with our micron and absenteeism in our supply base where we started to get some basic automotive part shortages in the fourth quarter. That's eased a lot in the first quarter but we still see the semiconductor impacting us. Now we think it will last all the way through this year potentially even into next year. Look at that. The number of chips in our vehicles gone from you know to 3000 up with this kind of electric vehicle like lightning. So we're using more and more of these even if the capacity increases is not fast enough for the advancement in the vehicle. So it's something we have to deal with and we're making our most profitable vehicles and protecting the production of them. That's our first priority. You said 40 percent of Ford vehicles will be EV or sales will be by 2030. Since then you've had to double production of lightning twice. Yes triple production of the marquee in Mexico. So I wonder if that 40 percent number is low. Like could more than half of Ford sales be coming from EVs and 20 30. It's a good question. I think we're going to learn a lot on lightning. I think this is there's no more iconic shape than a pickup truck. Ford's been the best selling pickup truck for decades. You know we just won again last year. So I think if if F 150 goes beyond a hundred and fifty thousand you know this could go faster than we think. Mary Barra said she wants all of GM sales to be heavy by 2035. Why not make a similar pledge. Well we'll see how. You know right now we don't know what the administration is going to do on consumer incentives. Right now the U.S. market is only 3 percent all electric. Europe's at 20 percent. The difference is really the support for consumer incentives. So we don't know how fast that'll go. And I think actually GM aspire to that. But they they didn't say heavy duty vehicles like super duties and big vans. I think they meant only light duty. I think it'll be a while before a super duty customer goes all electric. How do you think lightning compares to the Chevy Silverado. GM just unveiled. Well we have hundred thousand orders and we're launching right now. So I think look what we bet on is Bill Ford tough and all the testing all the knowledge we have in work customers or people use it for commuting and work. That's our bet. We bet on forty thousand dollars. We bet on let's say an Excel T truck that's affordable. Others are betting on very high end products. We're betting on now production now. We're going to scale now. We're not waiting for a year two or three in advance. And we're and we made that bet several years ago. And we're really betting on affordability for people like these customers here and in Sonoma. That's our bet. I think it's very different than than many of the other companies. You congratulated Elon Musk on being Time's Person of the year. What are you learning from Elon Musk. A lot. I think the thing that that I learn the most is that what it takes to succeed in this digital connected electric product our talents and knowhow and a way of managing the business is different. And what we've done 118 years it's kind of like snowboarding and skiing. We both we both share the lift. But as soon you get off the lift the intuitions are wrong between both businesses. You know you kind of have to relearned how to get down the slope. And I really admire frankly that the difficulties they had and the way they manage those difficulties into the success they had they're now making more than 10000 hours of vehicle because of their scale. I like that kind of business. Tesla still number one by far. But you've said you told Bloomberg that Ford could be number one in electric cars. Is there a when they're like. How many years off could that be. Well in the next not to be precise or anything but in 22 months we get to a running rate of about 600000 production at the company. I think that'll put a solidly in number two. We'll see. And that's before Blue Oval City in Tennessee comes on line three years. So we have our biggest assembly plant ever brand new facility in Tennessee. We have three new battery plants all coming online in three years. So the six hundred thousand is a first step and then we'll see after that. The revival of the Bronco has been pretty popular. Will there be an electric Bronco and when. Well why not. Why not. I think what we've learned with electric though is is you know not all vehicles are going to be the best version of the electric version will be exactly like the ISE version. You know look at Mustang Marquee. It's totally different than a Mustang coupe you know a V8 coupe. So you know we have a lot of work to do to define our lineup. We're in the midst of that right now. The Broncos success is really a pretty big signal from the market. Hey people really want authentic off roaders. Look what we did with the F1 50. Absolutely. Your investment in revision one point two billion dollars now worth more than eight billion dollars. Any plans to sell that stake now that Ford isn't on the board. You're not you know developing a car together. You could make some money. Yeah. On that investment. Well it's been a great investment. And we really like R.J. We really like what he's doing. The fact of the matter is we're both in the same almost same segments. And so you know we'll work we'll work through that. We really. I've always seen this as strategic investments. So there's a lot of possibilities said that we could do with with Ravi and beyond just building a vehicle together. I won't go any further than that. So no plans to sell. No. Doesn't know our mark. But you know we'll look at everything. Everything is on the table. Our lockup period ends in the middle of May. And do you see a cross shopping between. Not yet. Not yet. The the maverick is an R R F 150. Lightning isn't out yet. You know they're just scaling up. So it's early days when I don't expect us to be in the same cross shopping in early days for 150 lightning. RJ and I talked about this very different than their truck. It's much smaller. This is really for a lifestyle off road. Ours is really kind of a work truck. A working person's vehicle e transit is very different than their Amazon van you know site in the early days here as the brands build out. I don't really see us being cross shopped initially but we are in the same segments. Right. You just stop taking orders for the maverick. One hundred twenty thousand dollar car was super popular. What does that tell you about the demand for affordable cars. Now that the average price of a car is forty seven thousand dollars you know it's interesting what you said. I mean there there are a lot of truck customers are paying more than BMW Customers Day and Mercedes customers. So cars are getting more expensive. Electrification would just accelerate that. The used car market has never been hot. We've seen resale values in used cars that we haven't seen really in decades. So people there is such an appetite for an affordable vehicle and it's on us as an industry to make electric affordable. And I think that's a huge opportunity. You know what we found with electric is actually the brand can go to get reinvented. When you go electric and digital you can actually enter segments. You have been in a long time. So I'm really interested in the team's thoughts on this affordable section. We've had a huge hit with Maverick. We got a lot of negative press on getting out of sedans. We invested that in Bronco and Maverick and the Lightning. And no one's really talking about coming out of sedans nowadays. So I really have a lot of faith in our team on this affordable segment. The Maverick has been a big hit far beyond our expectations. It's a pretty big signal from the market. Last question you're meeting with President Biden who obviously was a big fan of lightning. What's your message to him this week. The country needs to be competitive and all electric. We need to catch catch up with Europe and China. And to do that we need to put to help consumers make this transition to electric. And we need consumer incentives that last for some time to help the industry convert over because we need to build batteries in this country get raw materials from the batteries in this country. That will all happen as customers go electric. It's just 2 or 3 percent in the industry today. It needs to be much much higher to be competitive as a country. Jim Farley CEO for thank you so much for joining. Thank you.

No schedule data available.

Ford Won’t Rule Out Selling Rivian Stake, CEO Farley Says

Ford Motor Co. will not be selling its $8 billion stake in electric truck maker Rivian right now, CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg's Emily Chang in an exclusive interview. The Ford chief did leave the option open for the near future, however, saying everything is "on the table." (Source: Bloomberg)

More From Bloomberg Technology
All episodes and clips