Gov. Ron DeSantis wasn’t the only person who made a big announcement on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk this week. Yesterday, Ford CEO Jim Farley joined Musk to announce that Ford was partnering with Tesla to give Ford EV drivers access to 12,000 more US charging stations at the start of next year. The move came as a surprise to most.
Ford Motor Co. struck a deal with rival Tesla Inc. to give its electric-vehicle customers access to the Tesla Supercharger network, a move toward a single industry standard to simplify recharging…
“We’re really pumped up about working” with Tesla, Ford Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley said on a Twitter Spaces session with Elon Musk on Thursday. Both characterized the partnership as helping to improve EV adoption.
Both companies also signaled the announcement on Twitter.
Excited to welcome Ford owners to thousands of Superchargers across North America next year⚡️✌️https://t.co/giU8PKHexE
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) May 25, 2023
The advantage of this agreement for Ford is obvious. Their customers, for the F-150 Lightning or Mach-E, will suddenly have access to a thousands more charging stations which are widely seen by drivers as the best in the industry. In fact, CEO Farley told a story during the conversation with Musk about what convinced him to do this. He said he was on a family road trip in California and his kids kept asking if they could charge up at the Tesla Supercharging stations they kept passing on the highway. He had to tell them no, they’d have to keep driving to other stations that were a bit farther out of the way instead.
The advantage of this for Tesla? For one thing, they’re probably going to make a little bit more by having Ford customers use their superchargers. For another, there are currently rival standards for charging ports in the US. Ford announced that starting in 2025 it was going to install Tesla-style charge ports (known as NACS) on all of its EVs. That’s a big step toward making Tesla’s system the standard in the US as Tesla and Ford are the top EV sellers. Other companies that want to avoid being left behind may now feel pressure to also adopt the Tesla standard and make a deal with Musk. The market reacted positively to the announcement. Both companies were up about 7 percent yesterday.
Ford Motor Co (F.N) shares jumped by more than 7% on Friday after the No. 2 U.S. automaker announced a deal allowing its electric-vehicle owners to access rival Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) charging stations in North America…
Ford shares were up 7.6% at $12.25 in afternoon trade, while Tesla shares rose 7.5% to $197.95.
Those prices settled down a little by the end of Friday trading but Ford was still up about 6 percent and Tesla was up about 5 percent.
Of course there is a potential downside for Tesla which is that their customers may arrive at some charging stations and find a Ford truck is using it, preventing them from charging. But Tesla has about 24,000 charge stations in the US and this deal only gave Ford access to half of them.
Also, while Ford is ramping up its EV sales, it sold about 61,000 EVs in 2022. By comparison, Tesla will likely sell close to 2 million EVs worldwide this year and, as of yesterday, its Model Y reportedly became the best selling car in the world (of any type) for Q1.
For the first time ever, an all-electric vehicle — specifically the Tesla Model Y — is now the world’s bestselling car. According to analyst data from Jato Dynamics (published by Motor1), the Tesla Model Y has surpassed Toyota’s RAV4 and Corolla models to top global sales rankings in the first quarter of 2023. That’s especially impressive given pricing for the 2023 Model Y starts at $47,490, considerably more than the 2023 Corolla ($21,550) and RAV4 ($27,575).
The figures reported by Jato Dynamics reveal that the Tesla Model Y sold 267,200 units globally in Q1, compared to the 256,400 Corolla and 214,700 RAV4 units sold during the same period. That’s approximately a 69 percent year-on-year increase for the Model Y…
So it’s probably going to be a while before there are more Fords than Teslas at a given charging station. Here’s the link to the full Twitter Spaces meeting. It was pretty much a love-fest between the two CEOs with both of them laughing about how hard it is to make cars.
— Jim Farley (@jimfarley98) May 25, 2023
Finally, a random but related video just because I happened to see it. A friendly couple in Texas asking a Tesla owner about charging his car.
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