Who saw this coming?
For many, the news that starting in early 2024 Ford EV owners will be able to use over 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in the US and Canada is rather shocking. After all, the two have been competing for the small sliver of EV sales in North America, which has involved aggressive price cuts and plenty more. However, Ford CEO Jim Farley claims Tesla isn’t his company’s rival.
Learn about Bonnie and Clyde’s famous Ford here.
Per The Detroit News, Farley said at a recent Morgan Stanley conference, “We see the Chinese as the main competitor, not GM or Toyota.” That friendship apparently includes Tesla, an EV startup that’s matured into quite the threat to many in the auto industry.
There’s been talk in the past of Tesla allowing other vehicles to use its Superchargers, so in all honesty this isn’t that surprising of a revelation. To accommodate Ford EVs, Tesla has developed an adapter that works with CCS ports. That will be a fun thing to carry and hopefully not lose. Ford plans to equip its future EVs with an NACS port, making an adapter unnecessary.
“We don’t want the Tesla Supercharger network to be like a walled garden,” Elon Musk said during an announcement on Twitter Spaces. “We want it to be something that is supportive of electrification and sustainable transport in general.”
Ford says the BlueOval Charge Network was already the largest public charging network in North America with over 84,000 chargers. Only about 10,000 of those are DC fast chargers. But with the addition of 12,000 Tesla Superchargers, the number of options Ford EV owners will have on the go has grown significantly.
Farley isn’t wrong about the Chinese being a true threat to American automakers. One only has to look at the Australian car market to see what a flood of cheap (and we mean that word in every respect) Chinese vehicles can do to domestic brands. Europe is dealing with a similar situation, although they’re not as far down that path as the Aussies. North America could fall into the same trap. After all, it isn’t easy competing against companies which get the benefits of slave labor and a highly controlling, manipulative federal government willing to do anything to knock off the competition.
Images via Ford, Tesla
