Quote:
Originally Posted by EvoFire
Can you elaborate on what's outdated about them? I understand testing takes time and by the time most vehicles are for sale for the first year, they are already outdated in terms the latest tech available.
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A few of my old coworkers went to go work for Ford.... can't say my picture is complete but here's what I've gathered.
When I say obsolete, it's mostly relating to the batteries: layout, placement, structure, management, etc.
The
MachE and Transit E are both on GE2.
Cells are purchased from LG and assembled in house.
The low production numbers for MachE (50k) is due to cell supply limitations.
Let's call this 1st gen battery architecture.
The
F150 Lightning is on its own bespoke architecture with SK Cells.
SK is in legal hot water right now.
New
EV Edge/Nautilus are going to be on another new architecture with cells from a diff supplier.
All three of these are on an old battery architecture already... new models after
MY23 will have a new battery architecture (
4th gen).
Ford's spent a TON of money to be able to iterate quickly and try to catch up (i.e. why Wall Street has been fairly dissatisfied with financial results, these long bets take a while to pan out).
Use of VW MEB and Rivian's architecture was mostly short term stuff to try to appease Wall Street while they were working on Mach E/F150 Lightning internally. Rivian will likely be an EV Navigator, MEB will likely be used for EU models.