The Man tasked with nailing Ford's next Model T moment

Mint

3 days ago

Doug Field sounded a lot like Elon Musk when unveiling Ford Motor's strategy to compete against the rise of Chinese electric cars.
At an event this week in Louisville, Ky., Field detailed the thinking behind Ford's affordable electric vehicle program, which promises a midsize pickup priced at around $30,000 in 2027.
His ambitious plan boils down to implementing hardcore engineering to take down costs, while keeping performance; and upending 100 years of manufacturing practices to go faster, including through more automation.
All of which rang familiar to anyone following Tesla's announcement in 2023 to slash the cost of building its next-generation cars by 50%.
'Physics isn't proprietary," Field, Ford's EV chief, told me after his event Monday when I noted the similarities.
Musk sent a shock wave through the automotive industry in early 2023 when he touted Tesla's strategy to build on its cost lead and dramatically reduce things even further. That focus, though, seems largely abandoned as Musk now chases robot dreams.
Instead Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley is warning about the threat of Chinese rivals making more affordable EVs. He called this week's announcement Ford's new 'Model T moment."
In an industry known for hype and hyperbole, there is, perhaps, no single engineer who has been attached to more fantastical personal transportation projects in the past 20 years than Field. The Segway scooter; the Tesla Model 3; the Apple car. And, now, the Model T of tomorrow. Field is basically being asked to save the company from irrelevance—at least in the minds of Wall Street investors who think China has already won.
After Monday's event, however, investors didn't seem sold on Ford's latest hype-mobile. Shares finished the day down slightly—not the sort of reaction one would expect for such a game-changer.
One factor in the apparent apathy may have been that Ford didn't display an actual vehicle. Rather it showed video of employees supposedly looking at it off camera. ('That's awesome," one employee said.)
Or maybe it was Ford's timeline—2027.
When Field joined Ford in 2021, it was with the promise that he would infuse the stodgy old automaker with Silicon Valley juice. He was leaving behind the Apple car project, which was stalling out. He still wore the halo of having been a big part of bringing out the Model 3 for Tesla in 2017, Musk's original dream for offering a more affordable EV to the masses.
That vehicle, along with its Model Y sister, helped revolutionize the automobile industry, proving electric cars could be both desirable and profitable. It also set off a race among rivals to catch up.
'Like probably a lot of people, I came in with slightly unrealistic expectations of how quickly [things could be changed], but that's an industry thing, not just a Ford thing," Field said.
What he's doing at Ford is harder than Tesla, he said. Doing something new at an established company requires overcoming inertia, and a culture that has developed over generations. He has hired a team, including a former key Tesla engineer named Alan Clarke, that's eager to change.
'The knothole that you have to go through is to transition from that model of operation to the big industrial machine of Ford," Field said. 'We really do have to work with the teams so that there's mutual respect—there's respect for being naive and trying new things, and there's also respect for the practicality of running a plant."
Still, he remains optimistic, even as Ford burns through cash on its EV efforts. It lost $5 billion on the EV business last year alone and has dramatically scaled back its ambitions—recently delaying an announced full-size EV pickup until 2028 and reducing plans for a new electrical architecture important for software features.
The market isn't what Ford thought it would be just a few years ago. The batteries required for a large vehicle would make them too expensive. And the Chinese have figured out how to make appealing, lower priced EVs.
Now, Field's $30,000 truck—which is said to have the acceleration of a Mustang and more interior room than a Toyota RAV4—is the new play.
Key to his effort is a vehicle that has a smaller battery—the most expensive part of an EV—while finding ways to make the body lighter and have less drag so performance isn't diminished. Their vehicle reduces the number of parts by 20%, according to Ford.
To achieve that, Field's team looked at the overall goal of the project rather than each member's own individual assignments. More expensive brakes, for example, might help lower costs in other parts of the vehicle.
'In our old systems, a chassis engineer might be actually penalized for spending an extra $5 on brakes and in cases like this project that $5 could have saved us $20 in batteries," Field said.
These were classic hallmarks of Field's work at Tesla when he was pushing development of the Model 3 to be much cheaper than its predecessor, the Model S, which regularly sold for around $100,000. Or, as Field told reporters before this week's event, his team brought to Ford product development 'first principles thinking"—a favorite Musk-ism for analyzing problems to their most basic levels.
Manufacturing speed and automation have long been a focus for Musk. In 2023, Tesla began talking about its new manufacturing system that it dubbed 'unboxed," a process to improve efficiencies that moved away from a single line to build the vehicle in sections.
A key part of Field's plan, too, involves changing how the car is manufactured, updating practices as old as Ford itself. The project calls for giving up a single manufacturing line for three parallel lines that, the company said, will allow for greater speed.
Ford's plans also call for massive castings of the front and back of the vehicle's frames—again similar to advances that Tesla has implemented to its vehicles. It was an idea that Musk drew inspiration from die-cast toy cars, thinking it could reduce the number of parts required.
At the event, as Field talked about the changes coming, he even borrowed an old engineering axiom from his former boss. Musk, as he posted on X just this week, often preaches simplicity. And Field used Musk's exact words: 'The best part is no part."
Field obviously knows the playbook; now he just needs to score another big win.
Write to Tim Higgins at [e-mail]