Ford’s CEO hits Route 66, picking up EV charging etiquette and insight

“There are a few things you can’t learn in an office or from a PowerPoint.”

That’s how Ford CEO Jim Farley announced the start of his August road trip in the auto maker’s $50,000 electric truck, the F-150 Lightning. So far, he’s driven from the Bay Area, through Los Angeles, along Route 66, and is ending his trip in Las Vegas, and he’s documented the tour—from storing luggage in the “frunk” to inflating a bouncy house—on Twitter and in abundant press coverage.

By the time Tech Brew caught up with Farley last weekend, he was back in California for Monterey Car Week, but he still had EV charging on the brain, saying that the trip changed the way he’s thinking about the electrification transition.

“We’re entering kind of the messy middle of this transition…which is going from an analog to a digital product, where software will define much or most of the differentiation for customers’ experience,” Farley said.

EV adoption is on the rise globally, and EVs are projected to account for 18% of total car sales in 2023. Some challenges remain:

Ford, which has around 8% EV market share in the US, and whose Mustang Mach-E was among the most-sold EVs last year, has continued to report billion-dollar losses on that business, in part due to production problems. But the company appears all in on overcoming industry-wide adoption barriers, with major investments in battery factories and charging infrastructure.

Farley, who predicts Ford will hit the 600,000 EV production mark in 2024, said his EV pilgrimage highlighted the company’s burden of increasing product knowledge and helping consumers through the transition period.

Social battery: Farley had thoughts to share on the experience of refilling at charging stations (of which he said he visited five or six across his 1,000-mile trip.)

“There is a huge charging etiquette,” he explained. “It’s like a club you’re trying to get into but nobody gives you the posted rules.”

He pointed to poor charging manners like getting “greedy” with a high-speed charger, or overcharging in a crowded station.

“[Experienced chargers] almost laughed when I said ‘what’s a rookie mistake?’ They’re like ‘charging to 90%,’” he added. “It’s rude to overcharge when you don’t need to…if you’ve got another 50 miles and someone waited behind you, that’s kind of uncool.”

Another key takeaway from EV driver finishing school? Charging is a social activity.

“Nothing against Tesla, but it feels like their owners have been charging long distance for so long that they actually don't even get out of the car,” Farley explained.

“I went to many chargers where there were 30 or 40 Teslas plugged in and no one was talking to each other, they were all in their car. And then there were a bunch of us owning Fords and Hyundais and other car companies…and we're all talking to each other!”

It’s likely rare that the CEO of a “Big Three” automaker gets the cold shoulder, but Farley said his attempts to get chatty with Tesla owners didn’t go over well. “I tried to go over and talk to the Tesla people a couple times, but I got the ‘you’re creepy, don’t come over here’ a couple times, so I gave up,” he joked.

Despite his mostly positive charging interactions, Farley said he isn’t overly optimistic about the EV transition.

“People say, ‘How's it going, Jim?’...I think they are expecting me to say it's fantastic, everything's great at Ford. But, we're not in that phase of our industry, we're in the phase of transformation,” Farley said.

“We’ve got to take the tentativeness out of the system,” he added. “But to do that, Ford’s going to have to change.”