Chief Executive Officer of Ford Motor Co. Jim Farley has formed a new unit to accelerate development of autonomous vehicles and drive new technology businesses.
Farley formed the Ford Next late last year with Franck Louis-Victor, a hard-charging specialist as manager from Renault SA, and now the Ford Next unit is structurally reinforced.
Farley announced that he has divided the company’s car manufacturing into two, namely the e model for electric models and the Ford Blue for conventional combustion engine vehicles.
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Ford’s autonomous vehicle unit Autonomous Vehicles LLC is also now part of Ford Next and its former chief executive, Scott Griffith, has been promoted to entrepreneurship expert for Ford Next.
Farley hopes this structural change will help the company become more agile in innovating. In addition, so that companies are able to face startups and technology giants such as Alphabet Inc.
“Ford will make sure we have the right structure and talent to compete and win,” Farley said.
See also: Ford will introduce seven new electric vehicles in Europe by 2024
To note, apart from strengthening the company’s structure, Farley had previously replaced the company’s human resources executive with someone recruited from Apple, namely Doug Field. The goal is to create a company that can act like a startup and attract hard-to-find tech talent.
“This reflects a more nuanced rebranding and repositioning of the existing group, not the creation of new ones or significant structural changes,” Farley said.
“This is our approach to the business model. You use it to drive innovation, you use it to actually incubate new business ideas.”
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