In this articleFFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTLONG BEACH, Calif. — As the global automotive industry retreats from all-electric vehicles after reporting billions of dollars in losses, Ford Motor continues to move forward with its next generation of EVs that CEO Jim Farley has described as industry-defining products.Ford’s push comes despite a massive slowdown in EV adoption, $19.5 billion in electric vehicle restructuring charges for the company, the elimination of U.S. consumer incentives to buy EVs and the company’s leading EV executive abruptly departing.”Agility is key,” Ford’s EV product leader, Alan Clarke, told CNBC during an interview at the company’s new Electric Vehicle Development Center in Long Beach, California. “We’ve been able to pivot around all the different market conditions. … The EV industry has had massive headwinds, and so we’ve had to adjust.”Ford’s continued confidence, albeit it at lower and slower capital rates than it previously projected, comes from its “Universal Electric Vehicle,” or UEV platform, which the company has developed from a clean-sheet design. Ford’s goal for the UEV is to be profitable and cost-competitive with global EV leaders from China and Tesla.A Ford employee works inside a high voltage lab at Ford’s new Electric Vehicle Development Center in Long Beach, California.Courtesy FordThe UEV is expected to be critical to Ford transforming its Model e EV unit from billions of dollars in annual losses to breakeven by 2029. The company has said its future EVs will be profitable within a year of launching.The first planned product based on the UEV is a roughly $30,000 midsize pickup truck for the U.S. market next year, followed by a family of vehicles underpinned by the platform.”The midsize pickup truck, there won’t be anything that competes with it, either in price or product form, and so I think it sort of stands alone in that sense,” Clarke said.Clarke — wearing black, red and white Nike Air Jordan 1s with an untucked blue button-down shirt under a black jacket — was employee No. 1 of the formerly secretive “skunk works” team leading the development of Ford’s UEV. The Tesla veteran of 12½ years was recently promoted from a senior director to vice president of Advanced Development Projects. That came as Ford’s highly touted EV and technology head Doug Field last month announced his unexpected departure. Alan Clarke, Ford’s executive director of advanced EV development, during a video presentation on Ford’s Universal Electric Vehicle platform.Courtesy FordClarke, who was recruited by Field, continues to speak highly of him. Farley has also continued to praise the Tesla and Apple veteran since he announced his departure on April 15. “He’s set us up for success, as has Jim,” Clarke said. “It’s certainly not that nothing changes. I think it’s at the stage we’re in; this is the thing that’s best for Ford, and I think Doug certainly recognized that, and it was the right time for him.”China competitionEven with Field’s departure and a less promising future for domestic electric vehicles, Ford’s UEV work continues.The growth of Chinese companies — although they have yet to enter the U.S. market, for now — has been a rallying cry for the Ford UEV work. Farley has praised Chinese automakers for their ingenuity and products, while also calling for protection from them in the U.S.”We are really fully committed to a level playing field here in the U.S. and also safeguarding our home market, because of the importance of the auto industry and our industrial base,” Farley said last week.Outside the U.S, Ford and other automakers are attemptin …
