Ford’s CEO brought Chinese EVs home from his recent trip to China. He liked one so much he wanted to keep it after driving it. But he’s not admitting defeat, he’s looking for inspiration for the next generation of Ford vehicles. This struggle isn’t anything new to Ford.

Ford lost its footing a century ago

By 1925, Henry Ford had already revolutionized the automotive industry once. His 1908 Model T leveraged cutting-edge technology such as the planetary transmission. He also pioneered the assembly line to drive the Model T’s price down to $850. With 15 million units sold, it’s still the most popular vehicle per capita, ever made. At the car’s height, one in four licensed drivers owned a Model T. But by 1925, sales were plummeting.

Henry Ford had kept this first car in production for nearly 20 years. His son Edsel (company President at the time) argued the Model T was outdated in every way. So by 1925, Ford was studying the competition to come up with something all-new. It upgraded from the 20-horsepower 2.9-liter I4 to a 3.3-liter unit. It also updated the controls, making the new Ford the first with the standard foot accelerator pedal, clutch, brake, and central shifter layout. Ford even pulled out the stops by offering the new car with a factory hardtop. What luxury! The 1927 Model A and 1932 Model B (with its introduction of the V8) put Ford back on the map.

In 2025 Ford is playing catch-up again–this time with Chinese EVs

Mark Twain said history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Exactly 100 years later, Ford is again studying the competition. This time the competition’s out of China. And it’s electric. But the sinking feeling Ford execs get while driving these cheap overseas cars around Dearborn would probably be familiar to the Ford executives from 1925.

Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley, recently traveled to China and brought five EVs home. The money and time China has spent improving its lithium-ion battery supply chain would make Henry Ford proud. The decades-long investment allows multiple Chinese companies to build EVs at a price-point unmatched anywhere on the planet. Farley said, “It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen. 70 percent of all the EVs in the world, electric vehicles – made in China.”

But it isn’t just the price tag that amazes him. “They have far superior in-vehicle technology.”

Like the old three-pedal layout that put the Model T’s clunky hand throttle to shame, the Chinese EVs’ new controls just make sense. “You get in, you don’t have to pair your phone automatically, your digital life is mirrored in the car, you have an AI companion that you can talk to – Chat GPT equivalent in China. All your automatic payment is already there, you can buy movie tickets – it has facial recognition so it knows who’s in which seat.”

Farley’s favorite Chinese EV? A Xiaomi SU7 that he “didn’t want to give up” after testing.

Can a skunkworks team put Ford back on the map in 2025?

Ford’s CEO is hoping that 2025’s “Edsel” will be his skunkworks team. Headquartered in California, its engineers have been tasked with thinking outside the Detroit-norm to design a low-cost EV platform. As Farley’s been forced to admit the larger EVs he’s currently building are unsustainable, he’s cut more and more of his Michigan teams’ funding and funneled it to the California team.

Recently, Ford filed a patent obviously inspired by Chinese EVs. It’s a system that uses in-vehicle cameras to identify passengers and adjust the seating arrangement. It’s a start. But like the jump from the Model T to the Model A, Ford will need to do a lot more to get ahead of the competition. Luckily for Detroit–and our entire country–Ford is once again looking in the right places.