Ford partners with Amazon & VW to tackle electric's biggest problem: charging stations
Snacks / Friday, October 18, 2019
Corporate codenames are sweet... "Team Edison" is the group of Fordies trying to take America's oldest car company into the future with electric. They've been busy:
- Last year, Ford committed $11B to electric car development, pledging to sell a majority of electric cars by the end of 2022 (bold goal considering it's mostly gas-powered F-150 trucks now).
- Next month it's unveiling a Mustang-inspired electric SUV (our hearts are RPM-ing with excitement).
- Yesterday it introduced North America's largest electric vehicle charging network (more on that below).
Nana lives 250 miles away... and your e-car only has battery for 200. That's one of the main concerns of would-be electric car buyers, according to Ford. Range anxiety. So it's giving Ford drivers a ton of new charging stations to soothe the worries.
- The network: 12K charging stations and 35K charge plugs.
- The pass: FordPass is an app that shows drivers the many places they can charge up in the network.
- The price: Free for 2 years. After that you'll have to pay up to fill up.
Ford's not a company, it's a modern family... To survive against tech-endowed Tesla and catch up in the race for electrification, it's partnering up — hard. Most of this charging network is handled by others:
- Volkswagen's subsidiary "Electrify America" will build out thousands of the public charging stations for FordPass members.
- Amazon is side-hustling to install home-charging setups for electric cars, and Ford's collaborating.
Latest Stories
Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.