Ford CEO Jim Farley has looked across the Atlantic, watched what happened to Europe’s automakers, and decided he’d rather not repeat the experience. His verdict on the Continent’s efforts to fend off Chinese brands: “It’s too late.”
Farley said during the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit the U.S. must “be extremely careful around how the Chinese OEMs come to our country,” according to Reuters. His reasoning is the cautionary tale already playing out overseas. Once Chinese brands arrived in Europe, they took share fast. The window to do anything about it there has closed.
It’s a candid admission from a legacy automaker boss. Although he’s been sounding the alarm akin to the way that Paul Revere warned U.S. colonists that, “The British are coming!” Farley is duly impressed with Chinese automakers and their fleet of affordable, tech-laden electric vehicles, having to be coaxed out of the Xiaomi SU7 after six months behind the wheel.
The anxiety isn’t hard to understand. Chinese OEMs moved into Europe and took share quickly. The region’s incumbents watched their home turf erode as a result.
For a legacy automaker boss, the prospect of Chinese competition arriving on U.S. soil is the kind of thing that keeps a CEO talking about being “extremely careful” in public. The comments land as legacy automakers across the board wrestle with electrification costs and shifting fuel economy rules at home.
The anxiety about Chinese automakers has been heightened in recent weeks by President Donald Trump’s seeming acceptance of those companies coming to the U.S. to build vehicles here — as long as they hire U.S. workers. That move comes as a bipartisan effort in Congress charges ahead to ban these companies in the U.S. althogether.
Additionally, scores of U.S. auto executives and other observers have said allowing those companies to put stakes in the ground in the U.S. would be the beginning of the end for many automakers.
[Images: Ford, Xiaomi]
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