Ford’s response to China: A completely new way to make a car
“We make a structural battery from the cells and it is the floor of the vehicle. So we actually made the seats on it,” Field says. Therefore, to turn on, there is no frame or structure with the battery at the top of which the seats are wrapped up – with the new Ford battery model. What is the difference with cell technology to existing chassis or cell to packaging? “This cell is to the body,” says Field, adding: “It was very difficult to make all these things.
“There is no magical success. It is just an engineering really hard,” he says. “And there is a bunch of complete problems to solve. Like, now you have this body that doesn’t have the floor, how can you go down the line? How can you pay the back paint, but haven’t painted the front half, and then you want to stick them together?”
“We knew we wanted to make the EV different, and decided how we wanted to build them. Great A set of engineering problems we had to solve it. “The worst of these problems? Sealing, accident [strength]Corrosion, Subsequent precision – all of this, doing things that are done at the end … is that the front end of the front is definitely the most difficult. “
Yes, much of these things with advanced things for EVS, such as the architecture of the area where different functions are controlled in different parts of the car, now you can see in the new TESLA Y and many EVs in China. Likewise, large aluminum castings are currently used by Tesla and Chinese makers.
However, if Ford has really been able to build a car in three separate modules, which are fully completed and just together, this is a first. Yes, Tesla talked about doing so in 2023 with its “without box” process, but it has not yet done so. In other words, Ford may multiply Tesla to the punch here. The old dinosaur has become completely converted to Velociraptor.
Almost as much as Ford’s new modular production, the number of people and the speed that the company has achieved this undeniable victory is impressive. “What is really interesting is the size of the team [the skunkworks had] Ferley says “If Ford had to do it,” If we had to [Ford] Do this, it would take five times. “
“When we agreed to start the program, three years ago, we hired Alan Clark,” says Field. Alan Clark worked for the field in Tesla, where he helped create Model 3, worked on Y, CyberRuck and more. “There are now people in China who probably approved him, but at that time he had made more electric vehicles in the world, so he was perfectly suitable for hitting. He is also a talented magnet. He has made the team very quickly. A world -class team. Many people who are very excited,” he said.
Farley thinks that Ford’s new way to build EVS is a good weapon for Chinese carmakers, an ideal example of exactly how to compete in the West. “You have the BYD model: 700,000 employees, 200,000 propulsion engineers. How do you beat them?” Asks for Farley.
“It is clear that Doug and Alan and the team built a propulsion system that was like Apollo 13, to get our battery much smaller than BYD. The advantage of their cost of vertical integration into the battery is offset by innovation at the power plant. We cannot beat them on a scale.”
