During an interview on CNBC’s Mad Money, Ford CEO Jim Farley dismissed concerns that Tesla’s upcoming Cybertruck would pose a threat to the company’s F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck.
“If he wants to design a Cybertruck for Silicon Valley people, fine,” Farley said. “It’s like a cool high-end product parked in front of a hotel. But I don’t make trucks like that. I make trucks for real people who do real work.”
The Cybertruck also likely needs to make an appearance first before it can be considered a threat. First announced in a circus of an event in 2019, Cybertruck’s production timeline has been pushed back multiple times. Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s latest claim was that early production would start sometime in the summer of 2023. Ford, meanwhile, delivered its first F-150 Lightning in May of last year.
There seems to be no real rivalry between the two carmakers, Farley did say that he has “no problem being opportunistic when it comes to advantaging my customers.” Late last month, he joined Musk on Twitter Spaces to announce that Ford EV drivers would soon have access to Tesla’s vast Supercharger network.
Current Ford EV drivers will need to use an adapter to access Tesla’s network of 12,000 charging stations. Farley also made the significant announcement that the company’s next generation of EVs would come with Tesla-style charging ports instead of the Combined Charging System (CCS) chargers used by most other EV makers.
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