Yeah, never understood getting in bed with an enemy. Not sure Tesla has battery technology that can solve this problem though. Do they not also license batteries from various sources as well? AFAIK LG and Panasonic are owned by friendly countries so perhaps less of a risk? At least for now South Korea and Japan are on better terms. In any case it’s good to see Panasonic open new large plant in Kansas. Beats importing batteries from China.
https://insideevs.com/news/765796/panasonic-worlds-largest-battery-plant-tesla-kansas/
Not much, if anything as 7Mary3 said. Just because the big shot in the White House and the Congress critters no longer intend to impose fines for CAFE non-compliance doesn't mean that all the paperwork and other bureaucratic requirements tied to CAFE go away. Ford and automakers still have to spend time and money on that.
Why don't the Congress critters come up with a bill to repeal CAFE altogether?
And this from Automotive News:
https://www.autonews.com/ford/ane-ford-new-cars-europe-0716/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter-ANEDaily-20250718
If Ford believe that EVs are the long term play in Europe, might it make sense that the skunkworks EV products might find a home in Europe, and include a car-form offering? The expected 'low cost' nature of these offerings might make sense for the price segment these products would compete in.
Well, a hit with a crappy transmission. They’re changing over to a new transmission for the 2026 model year. Maybe they wisely learned a lesson from Ford’s dual clutch Focus debacle.
“We don’t misappropriate [intellectual property] at Ford,” she said. “You just can’t use it without that. You’ll be in violation of a piece of paper that has passed across the globe. It’s just a means to get that back.” Drake noted that the entire project “got caught up in the political storm,” adding that licensing the LFP battery tech is “the right thing to do” for both jobs and Ford’s future EV projects.”
A couple points of interest:
– China does misappropriate intellectual property. Just sayin’
- The right thing to do is develop your own technology, and not be reliant on the enemy. Perhaps you should’ve worked out our licensing deal with Tesla instead, an American company.