Ford Splits EV & Combustion Businesses Into Separate Entities

Last Updated on March 5, 2022 by Anu Joy

Ford Motors, North America’s biggest and most recognisable brand of cars, announced today that they are splitting their EV and combustion units. Ford has been aggressively investing in the electric vehicle (EV) category, seeing the demand in that segment, but at the same time, is not letting go of its internal combustion engine (ICE) business. The brand is doing this to help it fight both “new EV competitors” and conventional challengers.

Under this, the electric unit, Model e, is meant to speed up the large-scale development of EVs while producing connected technology for all existing Ford models. On the other hand, their ICE division, Ford Blue, will concentrate on creating new solutions in the conventional combustion engine segment. These could be low-cost options all the way to luxury offerings.

Company chief Jim Farley will serve as president of Model e, while recently joined Tesla veteran Doug Field will lead the unit’s development as its Chief EV and Digital Systems Officer. Ford’s early EV models such as the Mustang E and F-150 Lightning have seen a strong demand, but despite that, the brand is still lagging behind Tesla. In most global markets, including North America, Tesla is the number one EV brand. The company is also planning to launch in the Indian market, while Ford has announced that they will wind up their India operation by 2022.

This announcement by Ford comes at a time when most legacy brands are slowly ramping up EV production and giving up on ICE. Recently, GM announced that the brand won’t be selling a new ICE vehicle post-2035, while both VW and Hyundai echoed similar sentiments. EVs are still costly in most markets around the world, but the move towards them is inevitable.