Ford Motor Co. will separate its legacy auto and burgeoning battery-electric vehicle businesses into two "distinct, but strategically interdependent" units within the company, the Dearborn automaker said Wednesday.
The move amounts to a major organizational restructuring within the Blue Oval that reflects the changes needed to scale up an EV business that can effectively compete against startups — namely, Tesla Inc. — and legacy manufacturers alike. It is not a spinoff, CEO Jim Farley says, but the creation of new businesses — dubbed Ford Blue and Ford Model e — with separate design, supply chain and customer experience teams, among other things. Both will remain headquartered in Dearborn, and will work together on certain initiatives.
"Why we're doing this is very simple: We want to beat the new players, and we want to beat the established players, and to do that we need focus now," Farley told The Detroit News. "But we don't need to spin it out. Because we want that synergy and expertise to move between these groups in very specific areas."
