Ford CEO Jim Farley’s proverbial love affair with China’s dominance in auto manufacturing is well documented. He admitted in 2024 that he daily drove a Xiaomi SU7 daily for six months, telling the press he didn’t want to give it back because he liked it so much. In October, he expounded on the fact that if given the ability to sell cars in the U.S., China could “put us all out of business” due to their manufacturing speed and superior tech.
Sales of Chinese cars outside of the U.S. reflect that worry. Back in 2011, 67% of cars sold in China were from foreign brands like Volkswagen. Now, though, two-thirds of cars sold in the country come from domestic brands such as Geely and BYD, according to Car and Driver. It’s not just in China where that growth is apparent, either. In Europe, sales of Chinese brands are nearing 10% of the market, per Automotive News.
This progress is inching up against America’s borders, too. Chinese cars make up nearly 20% of new car sales in Mexico right now, according to Mexico News Daily. And thanks to new regulatory changes, Chinese cars are set to flood the Canadian market as soon as next year.
Farley isn’t stupid, obviously. He sees how much more quickly Chinese automakers can develop a vehicle, ramp up production, and increase manufacturing capacity. And because of that, he has immense respect for them. From a recent episode of the Rapid Response podcast:
If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great, but they don’t really have an updated vehicle. The best in business for us, cost-wise, competition-wise, supply chain-wise, manufacturing expertise, the IP in the vehicle, was really BYD.
Farley spoke on how BYD inspired Ford to use China’s approach to affordability and use it on the segment it knows best: pickup trucks. According to him, China’s success was a main driver behind Ford’s decision to build its very hyped $30,000 electric pickup truck. From the podcast:
Now, if we’re smart, we’ll take the cost competitiveness of BYD, and then we’ll compete with that platform in parts of the market where we know our customers really well. This next cycle of EV customers in the US? They want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles, but they want it at $30,000, not $50,000 like the first inning. They want it affordably.
That $50,000 vehicle he’s talking about is, of course, the F-150 Lightning, the all-electric version of Ford’s iconic pickup. While the truck made a big initial splash, its higher price meant it never really moved the needle in terms of sales (despite being the best-selling electric truck when it left production). Ford had to halt production in September due to an aluminum fire plant, and never bothered to restart the line. Instead, it pivoted the Lightning to an EREV powertrain vehicle, which is set to launch next year.
The affordability crisis hitting people across the globe means China’s ability to offer modern electric cars stuffed with tech and range for reasonable prices is more important than ever. Farley points out, as he has in the past, that China’s government provides both direct and indirect subsidies to ensure its domestic brands have the edge on price. He also says that China has the capacity to build enough cars to supply all of North America if it needed to.
If there’s one quote from Farley in this interview that stands out the most, it’s this one:
That is the gift that China gave us: To be fearful and respectful enough of their progress that we could not organically just phone it in. We need to use innovation to compete against the best in the world.
It feels like we might be heading to a situation where there might be two car markets in the future: The United States and everyone else. America’s stance on effectively barring Chinese cars from sale in the U.S. means that, theoretically, domestic manufacturers don’t have to worry about more advanced cars from China moving in and taking sales. More lax rules on emissions mean that automakers on this side of the pond no longer have to strive for efficiencies and can continue to offer vehicles with the big engines that people want.
The reality is, though, that it’ll result in less competitive cars from domestic manufacturers, both for American consumers and export markets, such as Canada and Mexico. As a result, that means Chinese cars can swoop in and snipe that market share, driving down the relevance of American automakers. My colleague Matt has written about this in the past in greater detail; I highly encourage you to read his take on it.
Thanks to Farley’s respect for China, Ford is one of the few outliers that’s taking the threat seriously, at least going by his statements. Ford can—and does—sell F-150s in America all day long and make a huge profit from it, but without keeping up with China, it could lose out everywhere else.
Top graphic images: Ford; BYD
The Germans taught them this in the 60’s. The Japanese in the 70’s. The Koreans in the 2000’s. Now the Chinese….Who’s next?
At some point are they will be saying “Oh yeah, the Samoans really taught us not to be complacent”?
“Ford CEO: China Taught Us ‘To Be Fearful And Respectful Enough’ To Not Just ’Phone It In’
Buut you’re gonna do that anyway ain’t ya?
Ford already has a crossover developed by the Chinese, the Ford Territory. It’s a really bad car BTW so not looking forward to more collaboration, at least not yet.
The (Chinese) Territory was basically a Chinese car rebadged as a Ford.
So it’s just the possibility of someone else eating their lunch that’s finally making them value customers?
Making cars: not magic. Is China getting better materials cost, labor cost, design cost, advertising or marketing cost, product development cost, etc. “China better than John Wayne USA” = wrong answer. This is why CEOs get paid the big bucks, to figure this out.
Love De2roit reference in the top image!
maybe farley knows his days are short> looking for a job with a chinese maker.
Farley talks a lot. He seems to see the light but who really knows with those guys. If he doesn’t deliver this new truck at $30k and keep it there might be a rough time for him as he has been talking about this constantly for years. At least he is taking the Chinese seriously probably more so then others.
Not sure if the irony of the maverick is lost of him maybe he learned from it. Young team isolated to build something different without the old heads saying no you can’t do that or it will never work. Not having old beat down people thinking like that is part of why Chinese automakers are doing what they are doing. It’s basically generational trauma in the west at this point. Some escape it many don’t.
If they had really thrown their back into maverick made an ev version to start instead of the lighting while pritorizing various hybrids Ford would be in very different spot today. They had the right product at the right time and the wrong product at the wrong time and backed the wrong product more so.
Ford already has had global vs almost north American only platforms for over a decade. So maybe for them it’s normal. They aren’t likely to cannibalize f-series sales to go after a global platform. That’s what ranger is for and maybe maverick along with this new platform could be.
All of these execs spewing high-minded nonsense when we all know this mythical $30K truck will be a stripper loss leader with quality to match that only technically exists. The few buyers actually searching for this unicorn will not find them on Ford dealership lots in lieu of higher trims with “reasonable” market adjustments.
“Farley isn’t stupid, obviously.*”
*citation needed
Substitute “China” with “Japan” and “EVs” with “automobiles”, it’s the same bullshit Detroit spewed over 40 years ago.
Will they wake up and start building a competitive product?
That was a rhetorical question.
Every time I hear a quote from this guy, he sounds like he’s just decided to stop screwing you over after years of knowingly screwing you over.
He talks well enough, but yeah his words don’t really match what Ford has actually been doing for forever now it seems.
Googling “battery pack comparison ford mach e vs byd seal” is both hilarious and sad. America politicized the future rather than working towards true competition. Anyone with half a brain saw what was coming. Unfortunately, our politicians can’t even claim they have that much processing power
Right.
The best thing that Ford could do is fire that clueless hack.
He’s going to destroy the company.
LOL he didn’t learn that 20 years ago when he worked for Toyota? Farley literally has Toyota in his resume but learned NOTHING.
Remember that Chris Farley skit throwing the guy in a dumpster? Well, his cousin Jimbo says, “that’s what we do to engineers!”
This dickwad tried to secretly backdoor Chinese cars into the USA and couldn’t figure it out apparently from the latest reports.
NEWS FLASH FOR ALL THE CEO’S. You will not be able to replicate the Chinese car push. And you can’t because CHINA did it, not BYD, not any other company, but the CCP itself. They were given every opportunity and push from the government. You are not going to get that here and you shouldn’t get that here, at least not without some HUGE changes to how our OEM’s conduct business.
NEWS TO THE COMENTORS WHO THINK THEY CAN: Read above. Yes there has been huge greed in our companies, but there is in every large company, and most small ones!
Now we have over saturation and tons of e-waste from this push, but Brian and Co here still keep the praise strong.
Our OEMs have decided instead to continuously pander to a walled garden, and to prioritize short-term profits over being globally competitive. But, it’s ok, we’ll just get a fresh news cycle to stoke more fear and build up more walls of us-vs-them. It’s rather self-fuelling and self-fulfilling.
I can do without the CAPS; it reads poorly like you refuse to hear anything that might disrupt your narrative. Thank you for your attention on this matter.
I tried to use them more as a section depending on if you were a CEO or a contributing reader here.
I agree with what you are saying here a bit, I think that it’s not even fear though. One big, dare I say HUUUGE (you see what I did there) advantage the Chinese and places like that have is continuity. China plans for 100 years, we can’t get 2- 4 in the USA, and I think your Canadian and in a similar place. Without a long term, sustained plan, no nation can compete in the same way as a place like China. There can be big blasts of productivity, but the slow, slog of the turtle eventually evens things out or pulls ahead it seems.
Part of my frustration and reasoning for the caps as well is that yes, I am sick of hearing the same old excuses, without people just being honest about the entire situation. Like you said, playing against each other so they can make a few bucks rather than sitting down and re-working a real solution.
The very same and exact ‘government push’ exists here, in both subsidizing the oil industry and regulations that allow large gas guzzling vehicles to be built. Some reminders:
I won’t even bother on the oil industry’s special treatment, which directly makes the above vehicles possible.
“And thanks to new regulatory changes, Chinese cars are set to flood the Canadian market as soon as next year”
Sales will be initially limited to 49,000 units… out of a market of about 1.9 million annual sales… about 2.5 percent of the market. I wouldn’t call that “flooding the Canadian Market”
And part of the reason for this Chinese car deal is the fact that the legacy car makers have been collectively dragging their asses on BEVs… especially affordable ones.
Even Tesla cancelled their affordable sub-Model 3 car program… though they have reinstated that program apparently.
And the fact is, the political climate in Canada these days is such that the majority of Canadians want to reduce our dependence on US-based products and services.
As Ford’s “affordable” electric Universal Vehicle Platform… I’m reserving judgement on it until I see some product on sale that uses that platform… and how well it does in real-world reviews.
And I hope Ford plans on using that platform to make some competitive CAR offerings… like a new Focus hatchback.
Not everybody wants a goddamn pickup truck or SUV.
Best I can do is a 20-year old Durango with a HEMI
Much has been said about Chinese brands, but…
I don’t know the numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Chinese built Volvos, and Teslas aren’t already taking up that quota. I guess the exception is the quota is also limited to vehicles priced under a certain amount, I forgot what, but likely much lower than those vehicles.
That might actually be the real threat to the US. If Buick, for example, that already build vehicles in China can source EV supply for Canada from there instead of the US. That might sting a little.
They did, that is actually the historical number except now a portion of it will be reserved for a lower price threshold. So no more of a “flood” that it was before.
And Ford is the one who brought the Made In China Lincoln Nautilus to sell in the United States until they too got slapped with a tariff. GM did the same with the Buick Envision. Zero sympathy here. Anyone who works for them and doesn’t start to look around for other opportunities or figure out a different way to pay the bills in their future needs a reality check, read the tea leaves for once.
Nothing odd about the Nautilus or Envison. That is automotive manufacturing 101 from decades ago. Build the factory in a models primary market and export to other small markets. When other markets grow you add local production capacity.
There is not car models shown for the $30K EV. The models are:
Hence, the reason why Ford will lose sales to Chinese, Japanese or Korean CARS.
Which is fine with Ford. Ford existed the car market years ago because it has a low profit margin and a declining market. Cars have only continued to decline since Ford made that decision.
The Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans make CARS because they sell in global markets that still buy a good number for cars. However that is steadily changing. SUVs are more than 50% of new vehicle sales in Europe and climbing. The European have found that they like their hatchbacks to ride a little bit higher too.
Well Ford sells into the global market too… but they are losing ground.
Also the reason why they had low profit margin in their cars was because of too much product overlap and the PowerShit transmission.
All Ford needed to do is ditch that lousy transmission and pare down their car offerings to just the Focus hatchback and Taurus sedan… though I think that instead of continuing with the Taurus Sedan, they could make a Mustang-based sedan and call it the Thunderbird.
Cutting the PowerShit would have cut their warranty costs and going to just one big sedan and one smaller hatchback would have solved the product overlap issue. And they likely would have been more profitable overall by having something to sell in those segments rather than having nothing and surrendering that part of the market to the competition.
Nonsensical management decisions like that are part of the reason why I don’t own Ford stock.
Ford does sell vehicles in Europe, South America, and China but loses money in every one of those markets. 100% of Ford’s profit comes from North America.
The US built Focus had no margin because A. Cars have low margins in general and B. Ford pays roughly 25% more for labor than their foreign competitors. Ford lost more than $1,000 on every Focus sold in the USA. There is zero chance of Focus production coming back to the USA. Ford was going to supply the Focus to the US market from China but tariffs killed that idea.
Ford also stopped building the Focus in Europe back in Nov 2025 so after this year Ford will have no cars for sale in Europe. The crossovers outsold their car counterparts more than 2:1 and have a higher profit margin.
The Taurus is also only made in China – local production makes no sense so it will not be returning to the US market either. There is talk about Ford selling a sedan again but it will be based on the Mustang, be a performance model and sell at a higher price point than the old Taurus.
TL/DR Ford doesn’t make a small sedan for the USA because the business case makes no sense. It doesn’t makes for any of the Detroit 3.
“. Ford lost more than $1,000 on every Focus sold in the USA. “
But again, I have to ask… how high were the warranty claims due to the PowerShit, the crappy Microsoft-based sat-nav and other stuff?
I fail to see why Ford can’t make a competitive car the same way Toyota, Honda, Mazda or Nissan do. Those 4 car makers don’t have a labour cost advantage like the Chinese do.
Ford has access to the same low-cost labour as other car makers because their footprint includes places like Mexico and China.
Warranty cost didn’t help but they just added to the losses. You cannot make a cheap compact car in the USA with UAW labor. Nobody is doing it. It wasn’t just the Focus that disappeared.
UAW workers at Ford and GM are paid about 25% more than workers at Toyota, Honda, and Nissan’s non-union US plants. 25% in labor is a big deal. A new UAW hire at Ford makes more than $100K by their 4th year.
Ford does have assembly plants in Mexico and in the past they use them to make low profit margin vehicles like the Fiesta and Fusion. Today Hermosillo is maxed out making the Maverick and Bronco Sport. Cuautitlan is making the negative margin Mach-e that was required for CARB and will still be required if California wins their lawsuit. Every Mache sold in a CARB state earned Ford $20,000 in ZEV credits.
Cars imported from Canada and Mexico have a 25% tariff. Cars imported from Korea or Japan have a 15% tariff. That difference alone can completely wipe out the profit from a cheap car.
Then there is the problem of small car sales in general. Subcompacts are basically gone – only the 500e left. The compact segment only has the Corolla, Jetta, and Mazda 3 left. The Corolla has 2/3rds the sales with 248K sold last year. Mazda sold 29,000 over 2 body styles, and the Jetta only 54K. Nissan sold 51K Versa’s last year and then killed the model though it was made in Mexico.
I’m calling BS on this. The Japanese did the same thing in the 70’s and the Koreans did it in the 2010’s. Neither time Ford has learned a thing, and been deeply complacent in their technology, designs, and quality. They have been bailed out decade after decade by tribalist truck buyers who will only buy American full-sized trucks and SUVs regardless of what is going on around them.
Ford’s current lineup consists of overwhelmingly mediocre crossovers and large trucks that are just compelling enough, yet unreliable and problematic to own. Farley acts like this is a unique revelation that he has had, and that this has changed Ford. We’re years into “Quality being Job Number One” and yet Ford continues to be the industry leader in recalls, unreliability, and and inability to design cars that are serviceable.
This time around, relying on those large vehicles is going to do them in. The oil issue isn’t over, far from.
I mean based on Fords reliability record the last decade or so they definitely were phoning it in for a while…
Sadly the Lightning was initally hyped as sub 40K, which was almost certainly a loss leader when that included a 300+ mile battery in a Base work truck. Like the under 20K maverick, nobody could really get one outside of a fleet sales and once demand seemed to go up as a result, they used that as the excuse to right size the pricing.
China is currently just going the route that Japan did in the 70’s, Hyundai did in the 90’s and so on. unfortunately we are more forcfully pushing against non-union and human rights abuse from Big Red, while at the same time leveling them up significantly with regards to manufacturing prowess by ignoring a lot of that elsewhere as the Jungle Website Delivers yet another gadget or trinket from that country.
Yea the thing that baffles me is that this is just textbook. Japan and Korea already swooped in using the exact same playbook. China will be next, then they’ll expand to conquest luxury marques. See Lexus, Infiniti, Genesis. The US industry is banking on cold-war style (USSR) insularity to try and stymy the market in the US. The rest of the world has spoken and is more than willing to leave the US behind.
“The rest of the world has spoken and is more than willing to leave the US behind.”
Many Americans have spoken and are willing to leave the US behind. This will not end (well).
A big difference between Japan & Korea vs China is that China is the biggest car market in the world as their domestic market, which helped them nurture their industry through its early stages.
That Ford EV truck can’t come soon enough for me. It’s really the vehicle that I’ve been waiting for and I hope that Ford doesn’t screw it up.
I would have thought the Japanese cars which hit them a generation ago would have taught them that already, but I guess some lessons need to be relearned.
The Japanese never forget
The Americans never remember.
(you can sub any country in for Japan and it still works)
Important to remember that Farley was at Toyota during that time so he’s seen how this goes from the winning side.
We can do without the ragebait on this site.
Tell the truth; this is not a “flood”: 49,000 cars out of a total Canadian market of ~1,900,000 (2025 numbers) is hardly a dribble.
ever heard the term “slippery slope”. Canada has experienced it in a few ways. Would hate to buy a house or want for a job living up there.
My sweet summer child, you need to stop getting your news from Facebook.
Please show me the cheap houses, and plentiful job market in Canada. Witty comments are not gonna convince me I’m wrong.
Edit: I just looked: Soft, but “stable” job market. No one buying houses, and prices expected to come down. So sounds like theres a chance for a house in your future if you have a job.
Sounds exactly like the U.S. market right now….except the U.S. is completely banking on worse, more expensive and objectively less competitive products in the mix.
The new ad literally in the middle of the page that just sits there while the text scrolls behind it makes this post (and all others) unreadable. I understand the goal is to get me to become a member but if not doing so is not an option any longer (you DO get money for me looking or being exposed to the ads) then you really should jjust go to a paywall entirely, same result with less hassle. I’ll check back in a couple of days to see if the user experience has improved. Thank You.
The ads are really taking a toll on the usability of this site, the current hovering and un-closeable Sonic ad is just the most recent.
I have had the comment box hijacked repeatedly by ads popping up and lost half a comment to typing nothingness in the box whilst a never-suppressable video for the Cross-Cabriolet plays in the lower corner. We get it, the top doesn’t work.
Every time this re-loads, the text box fails.
Also, this site is slow as death to load. Is this experience limited to us freeloaders?
I run an adblocker (ghostery) and the only thing i see anymore is the crosscabriolet or wwii jeep video showing up in the corner.
Yup, same redundant wwii jeep video showing up for over 3 months now.
No, they have made excuses about running the slowest website on the internet since launch.
Yeah, that’s an error.
There was some sort of error. Ads are going off for all stories today and this ad is being removed. It was a test, clearly it failed.
The problem with the comment text box that Matt mentioned is not new. I have it happen all the time on my work computer. I’m typing away and then suddenly the letters no longer show up in the comment box. I then have to click on the box again and start typing again. Then 10 – 15 seconds later it happens again, and again, and again. I’ve gotten to the point I type my comment in my email and then cut and past it.
I just encountered what you posted about. It wasn’t doing that last week. That floating ad in the middle of the page that obscure text rather than flowing around it is rough.
This isn’t quite as bad as the 30-second video ad for the NBA Playoffs on Peacock that blocks ALL of the text in the article until it has finished playing (in my admittedly non-fullscreen browser window). I realize internet advertising is a crapshoot in the best of circumstances, but this does NOT make me want to become a paying member. (It’s the content that does.)
There was some sort of error. Ads are going off for all stories today and this ad is being removed. It was a test, clearly it failed.
Thank you. I’ll expose myself to the ads again…