The electric version of Ford Motor Co.’s best-selling F-150 truck is poised to sweep rural America and tip the US market for EVs, President Joe Biden’s infrastructure czar predicted.
“You all are gonna be driving Ford F-150s with electric batteries in them. That’s how that’s gonna work,” Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor, said in an interview with Bloomberg News reporters and editors Wednesday.
“And rural America’s going to beat everybody to the punch — my prediction,” he said.
Billions of dollars will soon start flowing from the infrastructure law Biden signed last year into the construction of 500,000 charging stations to expand the potential range of electric vehicles, Landrieu said. To date, EVs have been more popular in cities than in rural areas in part because of charging limitations.
Landrieu said that even Elon Musk — the chief executive of Tesla Inc. who’s repeatedly sparred with the president and now publicly backs Republicans for office — is eager to help Biden’s team build charging stations that can be used by any brand of electric vehicle, not just those made by his own company.
“The allure of funding, and of a separate push to domestically manufacture more batteries, has brought all automakers to the table,” Landrieu said. “All the automobile companies go, ‘oh man, I’m in.’”
Landrieu said that in an April meeting with EV makers including Musk and General Motors Co. chief executive Mary Barra, Musk “was wonderful.”
“Elon specifically said, ‘I’m going to have open portal. I’m gonna have open source data, my stuff’s going to be interoperable,’” Landrieu said. “The thingamajig that you plug into the thing is going to work just like everybody else’s.”
Musk has repeatedly complained about Biden’s policies, particularly on the economy, and said this week that he voted Republican for the first time and was leaning toward backing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, for president in 2024.
Ford’s F-Series pickup has been the best selling vehicle in America since the first Reagan administration and the automaker has seen strong demand for the battery-powered version, the F-150 Lightning, that went on sale last month.
Nearly 200,000 buyers reserved a Lightning, which caused Ford to twice double capacity at the Michigan factory building it. Ford’s F-Series truck line generates $42 billion in annual revenue, making it bigger on its own than McDonald’s Corp., Nike Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and Starbucks Corp.
