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Another EV reset
Ford is back in the habit of rearranging the furniture in its EV business. On Wednesday, the company said it’s merging its Electric Vehicle, Digital and Design team into its global Industrial System, which sounds like corporate origami but basically means the EV unit is getting folded deeper into the main machine.
The goal, Ford says, is to help hit its Ford+ ambitions — including an 8% adjusted EBIT margin by 2029. That’s a fancy way of saying: the company wants the EV side to stop acting like the expensive roommate and start pulling its weight.
Doug Field is out
The other headline here is people, not org charts. Doug Field, the former Tesla and Apple executive who was brought in nearly five years ago to help Ford build its electrified, connected, software-defined future, is leaving after a transition period of about a month.
That matters because Field wasn’t just another suit in a blazer. He was one of Jim Farley’s marquee hires meant to narrow the gap with Tesla on EVs and software. When a company keeps reshuffling the EV deck and the face of the effort walks out the door, investors tend to assume the strategy is still very much a work in progress.
Why investors should care
Ford already took a $19.5 billion writedown late last year tied to an EV strategy shift, and it’s been dealing with six months of sliding EV demand. So this isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s more like a company repeatedly re-reading the recipe because dinner keeps coming out weird.
Big picture: Ford is still trying to prove its EV pivot can be profitable, not just ambitious. That’s the real test — and it’s still not passed.