The Ford company will build 600,000 electric vehicles worldwide by 2023, CEO Jim Farley reported.
Farley hopes that will make the company the second-largest US-based electric vehicle producer behind Tesla, LaPatilla reported .
Farley said the increase would double the number of electric vehicles the company initially expected to produce over the next 24 months, according to a Thursday report from Automotive News.
That production is expected to extend to Ford’s first three new electric vehicles: the Mustang Mach-E, the F-150 Lightning and the E-Transit.
It would come before production is expected to begin at a recently announced electric vehicle assembly plant in Tennessee.
Farley added that “the demand is much higher than we expected.”
He added that “this is a really new experience for this great company, trying to be agile. We had to approach it very differently than we have done with capacity planning. “
It’s unclear whether 600,000 would place it second behind Tesla. General Motors plans to sell 1 million electric vehicles worldwide by 2025.
Tesla said in its third-quarter investor update that annual installed capacity at its Fremont, California vehicle assembly plant is 600,000 and in Shanghai more than 450,000 cars per year. The company is also building new factories near Austin, Texas and Berlin.
A GM spokesman said the automaker was approaching 300,000 electric vehicle sales globally during the first nine months of this year, mostly in China.
GM also plans to convert at least four North American plants that currently produce internal combustion engine vehicles to be capable of producing electric vehicles in the coming years, in addition to plants in China and Michigan that already produce such vehicles.
In relation to the increase in EV capacity, Farley said Ford plans to own more than 80% of the reserve holders for its upcoming F-150 Lightning EV.
Ford says more than 160,000 reservations have been made requiring a fully refundable deposit of $ 100 for the vehicle before it arrives at dealerships in mid-2022.
