Ford CEO Warns Tesla About ‘Product Freshness’ As EVs Become Commodities

(CTN News) – Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, has issued a warning to Tesla about “product freshness”, as he believes Tesla electric cars are at risk of becoming commodities in the near future.

There has been a price war brewing in the EV market for some time now, which Farley correctly predicted last summer.

Tesla started slashing its prices in January, and Ford followed suit with significant price cuts on its Mustang Mach-E electric SUV; but the slashing didn’t stop there, as kept slashing its prices across its entire electric vehicle lineup all year long.

In his latest comment on the situation, Farley (via Insider) compared what is doing to what happened with Ford when it became a mass-producer of cars for the first time:

According to the CEO, cutting costs and prices is only part of the equation when it comes to creating demand, as he warns Tesla CEO Elon Musk that if they only focus on cutting costs and prices, then their product freshness will be a problem in the future:

On Tesla’s most recent earnings call, Musk announced that goal is to adjust prices in order to ensure that demand matches increased production capacity, which the automaker plans to achieve in the near future.

Here is what Electrek Tesla has to say about it

There’s no doubt that has always made it a priority to make its products as great as they can possibly be, so it’s not like the company isn’t trying to keep its products as fresh as possible.

In spite of this, Farley has a point to make. Tesla’s products have become a bit stale in recent years, and some of them are even outdated. As a whole, the lineup is certainly lacking, with only four models and no new models since 2019, but the Cybertruck will help to fix at least part of this problem.

There is no doubt that the Model 3 is in the need of a refresh and it appears one will be coming next quarter, but we aren’t sure how significant the update will be at this time. It appears that a major change has been made to the front-end of the website so far.

However, the Model Y is Tesla’s most important product, and yes, there is a case for saying that, at the current production rate, it is beginning to become a commodity at the level at which Tesla is producing it. In the end, it all comes down to price.

It is my opinion that one of the problems facing Tesla at the moment is that it is extremely focused on its Full Self-Driving product, and is confident that it will be able to fulfill that goal while simultaneously increasing the value of the entire fleet of its vehicles.

In the meantime, and for those who are still not convinced that this is a certainty, Tesla appears to be slipping on other aspects of its business in the meantime.

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