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Who Will Win the Age of Battery Nationalism?
Ford’s announcement signals a late U.S. bid to compete head-to-head with Europe and China
For Ford, the fear of a Kodak moment came January 28, when Mary Barra, CEO of rival General Motors, announced that as of 2035, her company aimed to be making only electric vehicles (EVs) for the consumer market. GM would continue to manufacture a heavy pickup or two with gasoline engines. But for GM, Barra said, the age of combustion was effectively over.
Exactly a week later, Ford CEO Jim Farley — who took the helm of the decidedly EV-skeptical company in October — announced he will double spending to develop EVs and autonomous vehicles. In remarks yesterday, Farley made clear he wasn’t going to watch Ford go the way of Kodak, swamped and made obsolete by new technology.
To be sure, Barra was herself making the same calculation, as have VW, BMW, and virtually every major automaker in the world — all diving into EVs under the threat of being eclipsed by Tesla and the electrification of the automobile industry.
But in recent months, the competition has much more clearly become geopolitical. In a nascent age of EV and battery nationalism, Europe is aggressively building a lithium-ion battery manufacturing industry alongside a slew of coming EVs…
