Ford no longer plans to make an electric vehicle with EV startup Rivian, CEO Jim Farley tells Automotive News. The Detroit automaker originally announced it wanted to make a Rivian-powered EV in 2019 when it made its first investment of $500 million into the startup. Ford and Rivian already canceled a vehicle they planned to make for the Lincoln luxury brand in 2020.
“When you compare today with when we originally made that investment, so much has changed: about our ability, about the brand’s direction in both cases, and now it’s more certain to us what we have to do,” Farley said. “We want to invest in Rivian — we love their future as a company — but at this point, we’re going to develop our own vehicles.”
One reason Farley gave for canceling the EV collaboration was the complexity of combining Rivian’s electric architecture with Ford’s in-house software.
“As Ford has scaled its own EV strategy and demand for Rivian vehicles has grown, we’ve mutually decided to focus on our own projects and deliveries,” Miranda Jimenez, a spokesperson for Rivian, said in a statement provided to The Verge. “Our relationship with Ford is an important part of our journey, and Ford remains an investor and ally on our shared path to an electrified future.”
Ford announced this week that it plans to double the number of EVs it will build globally by the end of 2023 to 600,000.
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