Ford Faces VW Challenge

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 4, 11:58AM EDT

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Ford Faces VW Challenge — © Roman Nurutdinov / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

In a recent article at Bloomberg, primarily covering the EV efforts of BMW and Mercedes, the efforts of VW popped up. It is the No.1 car company in the world from time to time, a spot it trades with Toyota. Bloomberg looked at VW’s efforts in the EV market, again, as it tries to “differentiate” from models built by competitors. Many assume that Ford does not have to worry about these German companies. Its only competitor is Tesla. It turns out that is not true.

VW’s revenue is built on its sales in China and Europe. Its brief success in the US came decades ago. It is barely mentioned today as a brand with any presence at all.

Ford’s odds of doing well with its EV models in the US are fairly good, particularly in the full-sized pickup segment, a part of the car industry that includes the top three selling vehicles in America–the F-150, Silverado, and Ram. Ford F-150 Lightning has an early lead in the segment, but beyond this, its only real EV contender is the Mustang Mach-E. Ford has yet to prove it can do well in the SUV and crossover businesses. The company has given up on sedans already, regardless of engine type.

VW’s ID.4 is early into the US market, and the strength of its sales should be evident in less than two years as competition races to build EV market share. VW wants to elbow its way into the EV crossover segment. The ID.5 will likely be more competition for Ford, as will be the balance of EV models from other brands that are in America or will be soon.

Among Ford’s EV challenges is how many models it gets to market and how soon. VW has a strong balance sheet and engineering capacity among the larger companies. It already has a fleet of cars in Europe that will have EV versions now or shortly. Most of those can be added to its lineup in America, will means that the model lineup will be large.

Also read: This is the best-selling car in America.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.