This is a 'come to Jesus moment': Ford CEO says American carmakers are battling a perfect storm

https://fortune.com/2026/04/24/ford-ceo-jim-farley-automakers-threats-thr
ee-perfect-storms-us-companies/ 

Ford CEO Jim Farley, the leader of the 122-year-old company that
democratized the car for everyday Americans, said carmakers are facing
three “perfect-storm moments” that could prove existential. 

Farley took over as CEO in 2020, but has worked at the automaker since
2007. Before that, he spent nearly 20 years at Toyota. 

Now, he thinks the three-fold transformation barreling at carmakers
represents a “come to Jesus” moment for the industry, and they will have
to either meet each of the challenges or face the consequences, he told
Rolling Stone. 

China
The first threat is Chinese carmakers. As recently as 2022, Western
companies dominated the car market in the world’s second largest
economy, said Farley. But in 2023, Chinese automakers surpassed Western
rivals’ China car sales for the first time, the Wall Street Journal
reported. 

Volkswagen was the market’s biggest player for a decade. The German
automaker sold a high of 4.23 million units in 2019, but the market’s
growing preference for EVs and homegrown options led to steady declines
that cut VW’s sales down about 36% to 2.69 million in 2025. 

Ford has also seen its own declines in China, where sales fell to
288,000 in 2022 from a peak of 853,000 in 2016. 

Farley knows firsthand the capability of the Chinese car industry. In
2024, he spent six months driving a Xiaomi SU7, the first EV created by
the Chinese tech company better known for its smart phones, and didn’t
want to give it up. 

China’s carmakers have excelled partly because of controversial state
subsidies, he said, but also because of engineering excellence. 

“They have the most subsidies from the government, plus their OEMs
[original equipment manufacturers] are really good,” he told Rolling
Stone. 

After success domestically, some of China’s biggest carmakers are
expanding worldwide, with BYD surpassing Ford in global sales last
year—while selling only EVs and hybrids. 

Design
Second, car companies are also facing the challenge of greater
complexity thanks in part to the rise of EVs and a shift in engineering
toward “software-defined vehicles,” according to Farley. 

“The systems for safety, driver assistance, and controlling the vehicle,
are so sophisticated and there’s so much software in the vehicles that
are sensing devices,” he said. 

These vehicles are much more complicated and expensive to build than
traditional vehicles, and they require a different set of expertise than
that which automakers have traditionally employed to build their
vehicles. 

An example of this struggle is Ford’s F-150 Lightning, an electric
pickup truck that Ford discontinued in December after only three years
in production. Part of the problem with the vehicle was that the company
approached it in a traditional way, instead of resetting their approach
adjusted to building an EV. 

“It didn’t take us long to learn that our internal combustion engine
prejudice was so high that we actually hadn’t designed the cars right,”
he told Rolling Stone. 

Meanwhile, when comparing the all-electric Mustang Mach E to the Tesla
Model Y, the Mustang was 70 pounds heavier because Ford had approached
the internal wiring in a more traditional way. 

Elon Musk’s carmaker thought about designing its vehicle differently, he
added.  

“They said, ‘Let’s design the vehicle for the lowest, smallest battery.’
Totally different approach,” he said. 

Regulations
The third and potentially largest storm, Farley said, is the regulatory
whiplash that has accompanied the march toward lower carbon emissions. 

“Everyone thought the first inning or the second and third inning would
be pure electric vehicles,” Farley said. 

Instead, expensive batteries and the Trump administration’s weakening of
emissions standards have changed the calculus. In December 2025, Trump
reduced the mandatory annual improvement for automakers’ emissions from
the Biden administration’s 2% per year to a rate of 0.5% that steadily
drops to 0.25% in 2031. 

The National Highway Safety Administration predicted the move will bring
down the average miles per gallon for light-duty vehicles to 34.5 miles
per gallon by 2031 from the 50.4 miles per gallon average that would’ve
been reached under the Biden-era standards. 

“What that really means is, if there are no regulations, then every OEM
is going to go back to their cultural norm,” Farley said. 

Yet, Ford is hedging its bets. If emissions standards can change under
Trump, it’s likely they will change under the next president. 

So Ford moved away from its plug-in EV business and scrapped its F-150
Lightning in December. The company is betting its future on hybrids,
extended-range EVs (EREVs), and a smaller, affordable EV platform. 

“If we don’t put our chips on the right number and the right color, Ford
could maybe not exist,” he said. 


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.