DETROIT — In 2021, after Apple dropped its secretive plans to build a self-driving electric car, Doug Field left the technology company to embark on an impossible mission aimed at saving the U.S. auto industry.
He returned to Ford Motor Co., where he had started his career decades earlier, with the great ambition of designing electric vehicles that would allow the century-old company to compete with Chinese automakers, whose models are hugely successful among consumers and have been breaking global sales records.
Also read:
Continues after advertising
Field knew Detroit’s old methods wouldn’t do. Time was short, and to shake up the historic automaker he created a kind of automotive startup — a secret laboratory near Los Angeles, with a satellite office in the heart of Silicon Valley, which he called “skunk works.” (special projects team).
He recruited engineers and designers from electric vehicle makers like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid, as well as battery, electronics and software startups, and promised them the kind of creative freedom that tech workers take for granted.
To shield his project from corporate interference, no one who wasn’t on Field’s selected team could even get in the door. No exceptions.
“They were able to start from scratch,” Field said of Tesla, founded just over two decades ago and which, in practice, created the electric car market. “We needed to have a place within Ford with this same opportunity.”
The automotive industry is undergoing change the likes of which it hasn’t seen since the early 1900s, when Henry Ford’s Model T and the moving assembly line transformed the economy and the way people got around. The ubiquitous horse-drawn buggy ended up in museums, while countless other businesses became obsolete.
Ford and other traditional automakers now face this kind of obsolescence, especially as Chinese companies like BYD and Geely move quickly, producing 60% of all electric vehicles in the world.
Continues after advertising
The best hope is to outpace the Chinese by producing better batteries, more efficient electric motors, and other innovations—and then repeat the process over and over again. And the best chance of that happening lies with people like Field, who are trying to teach Detroit to be as innovative as Silicon Valley.
“I knew it would be a completely different challenge than anything I had done before,” he said, “which was trying to change the direction of a large organization.”
No one knows how this dispute will end, but there are already signs that Western automakers are falling further behind. Many of their most innovative and affordable electric models are still years away. Field’s first vehicle isn’t even expected to hit stores until 2027.
Continues after advertising
Field, who has also worked at Tesla and Segway, is fully aware that teams like his hold the fate of an entire industry in their hands. More than 4 million Americans work in automobile and auto parts factories, dealerships and repair shops.
President Donald Trump is determined to turn back the clock on electric cars, even scrapping strict fuel efficiency standards that benefited these vehicles. But as much of the world moves away from the combustion engine for good, industry executives see little alternative but to stay the course.
“Most of our sales are outside the U.S.,” said Jim Farley, Ford CEO and Field’s boss, “and we’re running up against the Chinese.”
Continues after advertising
“Space to move forward”
One thing in favor of disadvantaged Western automakers is that there’s plenty of room to improve how electric cars are made — and there’s no shortage of ambitious entrepreneurs trying to seize the chance.
A Boston-area startup, AM Batteries, is one of several companies working on machines that could reduce the cost of manufacturing batteries. The equipment created by the startup forms layers of lithium, nickel and other materials into cells using a dry powder instead of the liquid paste used in most factories today.
The technology eliminates the need for a long drying process, does not generate toxic chemicals and shortens the assembly line, saving time and money. And if it can be used on a large scale, the company’s approach will make batteries — the most expensive part of an electric car — more affordable.
Continues after advertising
“What keeps me up at night is knowing that engineers in China and Japan are doing the same thing,” said Lie Shi, CEO of AM.
AM, whose list of investors includes the venture capital arms of Toyota and Porsche, is one of dozens of young companies looking for ways to make electric vehicles cheaper and more practical.
Daqus Energy in Woburn, Massachusetts, tries to make batteries from abundant organic materials rather than expensive metals like lithium, nickel and cobalt. San Francisco-based Estes Energy Solutions is developing a way to encapsulate battery cells that makes them lighter.
Niron Magnetics in Minnesota is working with Stellantis, maker of Jeep and other brands, on substitutes for rare earth metals needed in electric motors so that automakers are not dependent on Chinese suppliers. There are many other examples.
“There’s a lot of room to advance these technologies,” said Brian Potter, a structural engineer who recently wrote the book “The Origins of Efficiency.”
Despite being innovative, startups don’t solve everything: in the end, the responsibility falls on Ford and other traditional automakers — used to gradual changes — to reformulate their way of working.
Field’s California team has developed a midsize pickup truck put together in a way that showcases the kind of innovation that is perhaps the U.S. auto industry’s best hope.
The front and rear sections of the pickup will be molded from molten aluminum in giant machines, rather than being welded and glued together from hundreds of parts, as most cars are made today.
The method allows Ford to install panels and other internal components before fitting the large sections around the battery. Assembly line workers don’t have to lean uncomfortably inside the car, as they do in most factories today.
Assembly will be so much more efficient and cheaper that when the pickup hits the market, it will cost $30,000, Ford said — not much more than the smaller gas-powered Ford Maverick.
Change fast or get run over
While Chinese cars are largely barred from the United States by high tariffs and other restrictions, Ford dealers in places like Bangkok, London and Mexico City are already taking on Chinese automakers that offer high-quality vehicles at low prices, Farley said in a recent interview in Detroit.
If Ford and other American automakers are unable to defend their territory, they risk becoming niche manufacturers, limited to large gas guzzlers sold only in the United States.
“I have 10,000 dealers in the world. Only 2,800 are in the U.S.,” Farley said. “Then do the math.”
In Thailand, for example, the Ford Everest gasoline SUV seats seven people and costs 1.2 million baht ($37,700). An electric BYD M6 seats six and costs $26,000.
“It’s the biggest battle of my career,” Farley said.
Farley’s concerns echo throughout the automotive industry. Electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, represent around 10% of new car sales in the United States, but in Europe they account for almost 30%, and in China they account for over 50%.
If that wasn’t enough, American automakers still face sharp swings in federal policy. Trump, who rejects climate science, has reversed energy and automobile policies that date back to the George W. Bush administration.
Innovative technologies could be the salvation of the U.S. automotive industry — but only if they are made here. Historically, this was not always the case. The lithium-ion battery was developed mainly in university and corporate laboratories in the USA, United Kingdom and Japan. But today, the largest manufacturer of lithium-ion batteries for cars is CATL, a Chinese company founded in 2011.
Western companies need to move fast. Developing an entirely new vehicle and setting up a production line can take up to seven years. Chinese manufacturers can get a new model to dealerships in half that time — sometimes less.
To speed development of its latest electric vehicle, a sport utility vehicle called the iX3, BMW executives visited engineers and designers at their offices every four weeks, rather than requiring them to go to headquarters in Munich to obtain approvals.
Teams were encouraged to ignore traditional barriers between corporate divisions. Foam technology experts who designed seats were called in to find the best type of foam to insulate batteries, ensuring resistance to fire and collisions in the new model.
BMW engineers are especially proud of a panoramic digital display that stretches across the base of the car’s windshield, showing directions and other information without requiring the driver to take their eyes off the road.
The company plans to start selling the iX3 in the United States in 2026 for around $60,000. It should go 400 miles on a full charge and can be recharged on a fast charger in just 21 minutes.
But showing how difficult it is to stay one step ahead of China, Xiaomi — a smartphone and car maker in Beijing — has started selling a car with a widescreen display similar to BMW’s. And some new BYD models can be refueled in less than 10 minutes on ultra-fast chargers that the company has begun installing in China.
Start over
At their “monastery” in Long Beach, California, Field’s team at Ford—which included Alan Clarke, responsible for developing new vehicles at Tesla—threw out the old organizational chart. Designers responsible for aesthetics worked side by side with aerodynamics engineers tasked with reducing air resistance. Traditionally, these teams occupied separate offices.
Designers and engineers know that “you both have the same mission: to create something efficient and incredibly attractive,” said Field, who credits her parents with her appreciation for both engineering and aesthetics. His father was a chemical engineer, and his mother was an artist and musician.
Field, who lived in Texas, Indiana, Canada and Connecticut during his childhood, followed a path close to his father’s and studied mechanical engineering at Purdue University. He later earned master’s degrees in engineering and business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
While Ford made the unusual decision to isolate this team away from its headquarters, other automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, GM and Honda have also instructed employees to create what the industry calls a “blank slate project” — one that is not tied to previous models or old working methods.
Dan Cook, CEO of Lyten, a battery maker in San Jose, California, said he believes in the creativity and willingness to take risks that have so often put the United States at the forefront of new technologies such as computers and microchips.
Lyten is developing batteries made primarily from lithium and sulfur, materials that are extremely cheap and widely available in the United States. If the company can mass produce, the result will be cheaper, lighter batteries that don’t rely on Chinese materials.
“Silicon Valley exists because of the freedom to innovate,” said Cook, who began his career at GM, “and the freedom to think and make mistakes.”
Field’s task now, he said, is to marry Ford’s century of manufacturing experience with that kind of ingenuity. As the vehicle approaches the production phase, it is allowing more people to cross the “skunk works” divide. The team now has a satellite office in Dearborn, Michigan, Ford’s hometown.
“Making a large company able to produce high volume and high quality and still innovate would be a force that no one would be able to compete with,” he said.
c.2025 The New York Times Company
