When Jim Farley sat down to dissect a Tesla Model 3 and then a set of Chinese-built electric vehicles, he expected to learn some things. What he found, he says, really shook him. The wiring, the architecture, the cost structure all of it revealed how far ahead some rivals had raced. And for Ford, the wake-up call triggered a wholesale shake-up.
Farley described the moment simply: “I was very humbled when we took apart the first Model 3 Tesla and started to take apart the Chinese vehicles. When we took them apart, it was shocking what we found.” His words boiled down to this: Ford had been caught flat-footed. For example, he noted that Ford’s own Mustang Mach-E contains roughly 1.6 km more wiring than the Tesla Model 3, adding weight and requiring a larger battery. That kind of inefficiency, he says, is unacceptable in the EV era and helped lead him to reorganize Ford’s electric-vehicle operations into a standalone division in 2022 called “Model E.”
Farley told this story on a recent podcast and elaborated that the teardown revealed two big things: one, that Tesla and leading Chinese EV makers have pushed higher levels of integration, cost-optimization, and manufacturing discipline; and two, that the U.S. legacy automakers including Ford can’t simply transform incrementally and hope to win. With Chinese brands deploying affordable, advanced EVs and Tesla moving ahead on scale and software, Ford’s business model needed to change.
Equally noteworthy is how Farley frames Chinese EV makers in this narrative. He has repeatedly warned they are an existential threat not just to Ford, but to Western automakers as a group. He admitted to driving a Chinese-built EV himself to better understand the competition. He said: “EVs are exploding in China … We can’t walk away from EVs … if we want to be a global company, I’m not going to just cede that to the Chinese.” The result: Ford is pivoting toward more affordable EVs, smaller batteries, fewer materials, lower cost structures and betting on a new “universal” EV platform to underpin future models including a $30,000 midsize truck around 2027.
The cost of that pivot is steep. The EV division has posted multibillion-dollar losses; Farley acknowledged the business is “brutal” but said accountability and speed forced the decision. He told employees and investors that taking on the hardest problems publicly rather than hiding missteps is a feature, not a bug. He wants Ford to transform fast, and believes the angst of finding yourself behind rivals is the only way to motivate that kind of change.
For you as a consumer or observer, this matters. What this signals is that Ford isn’t merely participating in the EV race it’s admitting it was behind and is now trying to catch up. That means if you bought a Ford EV recently, the company is taking your trust seriously but it also means you may see evolving models, platform changes, and sometimes rough transitions. For the industry, the move underscores how dramatic the change is: EV design, architecture, manufacturing efficiency not just powertrains is where the next generation will be won or lost.
In short, Farley’s teardown story wasn’t just a technical anecdote it was narrative ammunition. It said: legacy automaker, meet challenger reality. The wiring, the weight, the hidden battery swap costs they’re the math that underpins the hype. And Ford’s decision to shake up its structure, its priorities, and its models is its response. For the rest of us, it means the next few years in EVs may matter more than ever.
