Ford said Musk and Farley will discuss “accelerating EV adoption in North America” on Thursday via Twitter. Twitter Spaces begins at 5:30 p.m. EDT (2130 GMT). Musk owns Twitter.
The event comes a day after Twitter crashed twice during Musk’s highly anticipated live audio chat with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, hindering Musk’s promotion of the social media site he bought for $44 billion last year.
At a Morgan Stanley discussion earlier Thursday, Farley said, “on the infrastructure side, I think it’s room for some collaboration between the auto companies, which is totally unnatural for us.” Tesla was not mentioned.
Farley continued, “I think we need to start – I mean, I think the first step is to work together in a way we haven’t, probably with the new EV brands and the traditional old companies.”
He branded the industry’s numerous plugs for charging networks “totally ridiculous” and said, “We can’t even agree on what plug to use.”
This year, Tesla opened portions of its U.S. Supercharger networks to non-Tesla EVs that utilize a competing charging standard, CCS or “Combined Charging System,” as the Biden administration seeks billions of subsidies to expand charging networks.
“I think Ford’s overall strategy with EVs is smart. The Lightning F-150 is popular.” He justified Ford’s electric vehicle losses. “Always tough with margins for new vehicle lines, especially when there are major technology shifts.”
On Thursday, Farley suggested Ford should approach a new firm like Tesla, Nio Inc (9866. HK), or BYD (002594. SZ) “to kind of work together in a non-natural way as competitors.” Ford will do that because that’s who we are.”