Ford preps cheap Tesla Model 2 rival

The first mass market electric vehicle by Tesla is fast approaching and the competitors are already mulling direct responses to the Model 2. Ford, in particular, has apparently had a "skunkworks" team developing an affordable EV for two year now, and it is led by none other than Adam Clarke, who Ford poached from Tesla. The "low-cost" electric car project of Ford now engages another Tesla alum - Anil Paryani - whose engineering team Ford acquired when it bought the Auto Motive Power (AMP) startup back in November. According to Ford's CEO Jim Farley:

We’re also adjusting our capital, switching and more focused onto smaller EV products. Now this is important because we made a bet in silence two years ago and we developed a super-talented skunkworks team to create a low-cost EV platform. It was a small group, a small team - some of the best EV engineers in the world - and it was separate from the Ford mothership. It was a startup and they’ve developed a flexible platform that will not only deploy to several types of vehicles, there will be a large install base for software and services that we’re now seeing at Pro.

As if to dispel all doubts about the exact development target of Ford's affordable EV project, Jim Farley added that "all of our EVs teams are ruthlessly focused on cost and efficiency in our EV products, because the ultimate competition is going to be the affordable Tesla and the Chinese OEMs."

Evidently, the Tesla Model 2 will have plenty of competition when it is announced some time this year and released in 2025. Besides Ford's cheap mass market EV many other major automakers like VW have announced sub-$25,000 electric car projects, or already have released their affordable vehicles like the BYD Seagull or the electrified Renault 5.

Granted, everyone seems to be waiting on the final Tesla Model 2 specs and price list in order to finalize the development of their direct competitors, so Tesla better execute well as the mass market EV field could get very crowded very fast.

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