Ford dismisses competition from electric van startups

New disruptors in the electric-van segment will struggle to compete with Ford on costs, said Hans Schep, the automaker's head of commercial vehicles in Europe.

"I'm not worried about newcomers," Schep told Automotive News Europe, citing the company's low-cost manufacturing in Turkey along with economies of scale from the company's alliance with Volkswagen Group as the reasons that give the automaker an advantage.

"That scale is something that is very hard to compete with if you are trying to get volume out of a micro-factory or a few micro-factories," he said.

The micro-factory reference is in relation to Arrival, which plans to build its electric vans and buses in small-scale factories with a maximum of 10,000 units. The low-capital expenditure to set these up and their proximity to markets will give the company an edge over competitors, the UK startup has said.

"Because micro-factories are profitable at a lower volume you can start to create much more customizable vehicles for the local places you serve," Avinash Rugoobur, Arrival's president, told Automotive News Europe in January.

Arrival investor UPS has ordered 10,000 vans from the company with the option of 10,000 more. The first vehicles are expected to start production in the third quarter next year, Arrival has said.

Ford will launch the electric e-Transit in Europe early next year. A 67-kilowatt-hour battery battery pack will give the van a range of up to 350km (217 miles) on the combined WLTP cycle, depending on body style.

The replacement for the smaller Transit Custom, Ford's best-selling van, will come with full-electric and hybrid variants when it goes into production in Turkey in 2023.

Ford will also engineer a new VW Transporter van alongside the Transit Custom and build the vans in Turkey.

In April, Ford announced a new small van that would go into production in 2023 at its Romanian plant. A full-electric version will follow in 2024. Schep gave no further details on the van.

Ford was the top-selling commercial vehicle brand for the sixth consecutive year in Europe in 2020 with sales of 329,826 to give it a market share of 15 percent, the automaker said. Ford has said previously that vans deliver the bulk of the brand's profits in the region and will be its focus going forward.

Schep said the automaker will also launch a plug-in-hybrid version the next Ford Ranger before 2025. He did not elaborate on whether it will be a plug-in hybrid or full electric.

Ford will develop the new Ranger alongside an Amarok pickup for VW. Ford said in January that it will build the Amarok at its plant in Silverton, South Africa, where it is investing $686 million to raise annual production capacity to 200,000 units from 168,000.

Ford this month announced an electric version of the F-150 full-size pickup called Lightning that will go on sale in the U.S. in 2022. The limited production volume and high demand meant it would be unlikely to be offered in Europe, Schep said.

Ford on May 26 announced two new battery-electric vehicle platforms that will enable EV versions of vehicles including the Explorer, Lincoln Aviator and "rugged SUVs." The platforms would not cover Ford's van range in Europe, CEO Jim Farley said, but he hinted at a future EV platform that would cover Ford's vans globally.