Ford CEO Jim Farley said he drove a Xiaomi SU7 in 2024 to see what Chinese automakers were doing up close, and he said he did not pick a Tesla for that test drive for a reason. In a Friday interview with Rapid Response, host Bob Safian asked Farley why he had chosen the Xiaomi over Tesla to gauge the competition.
Farley said that if Ford wants to beat China in the car business, it should not necessarily focus on Tesla. “Nothing against Tesla — they've been doing great — but they really don't have an updated vehicle,” he said. He added that Chinese brands such as BYD are the best in the business, pointing to their cost, supply chain and manufacturing expertise as the edge Ford needs to study.
The comments land as Ford tries to reset its own EV strategy around cheaper vehicles. Farley said the next cycle of electric car buyers in the United States wants pickups, utilities and other body styles at $30,000, not $50,000 like the first inning, and that they want EVs affordably. Ford said in December that shifting away from producing F-150 Lightning purely electric pickup trucks toward smaller, more affordable and hybrid cars would cost about $19.5 billion.
The pricing gap shows the problem Ford is trying to solve. The company’s cheapest hybrid vehicle is the Maverick XL pickup, which starts at around $28,000, while Tesla’s cheapest model is the Model 3 at $36,990. Farley said Ford should take the cost competitiveness of BYD and apply it in parts of the market where it knows its customers well, rather than chasing every rival on the same terms.
The tension in Farley’s remarks is that he has been warning about Chinese automakers for months even as he studies them closely. In April, he said on Fox & Friends that Chinese cars entering the United States would be devastating to the U.S. manufacturing industry. He has also repeatedly described China’s progress in automobiles as something to be feared and respected. On Friday, that warning came with a clearer answer: Ford is not treating Tesla as the main benchmark, and Farley’s point was that the real pressure is coming from Chinese makers that have changed the cost and quality game.
Farley said as much in 2024, when he said he had been driving a Xiaomi SU7 for six months and did not want to give it up. The car he chose to test is now part of a broader strategy question for Ford: whether it can bring cheaper EVs to market fast enough to compete in the segment Farley says will matter next. For him, the lesson from Xiaomi and BYD is not admiration from afar. It is a warning, and a roadmap.
