Ford CEO Jim Farley is happy with his new electric car – but it’s not from Ford
In the past, Farley has mainly driven an F-150 Lightning from his own production – and praised the electric pickup to the skies on road trips through California. The Ford boss is also very satisfied with his current electric car, as he revealed in an interview with Robert Llewellyn for the Fully Charged podcast ‘Everything Electric Show.’
“I don’t like talking about the competition so much, but I drive a Xiaomi. We flew one from Shanghai to Chicago and I’ve been driving it for six months now, and I don’t want to give it up,” said Farley.
The fact that the Ford boss wanted to test an electric car from China for a longer period of time in his everyday life in the US was no coincidence. “I’ve had two trips to China the last two years that were literally epiphanies,” said Farley. “The last one was about the Xiaomi product. In the west, our cell phone companies don’t have car [divisions]. But in China, both Huawei and Xiaomi, the two biggest cell phone companies, are inside of every vehicle that is made.”
In view of these statements by a high-ranking US car manager, it is hardly surprising that the media are interpreting Farley’s quotes as a further sign ‘that American car manufacturers are lagging far behind when it comes to electric cars’, as Motor1 writes. One thing is clear: Farley’s statement from September, when he described Chinese manufacturers as an ‘existential threat’, is now seen in a completely different light with the information about his SU7.
What fascinated the Ford CEO so much about Xiaomi’s first electric car? Read our first impressions in our driving report!
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