Ford announced a collaboration with Volkswagen for “one or two” EVs in Europe.
An EV based on VW’s MEB platform should be unveiled later this year.
This could be the only model from this collaboration since future EVs will be made on a new Ford-developed platform.
The European arm of Ford has announced it will abandon its collaboration with Volkswagen once its first market-specific EV is launched later this year.
Back in 2020, Ford said it would be collaborating with Volkswagen on “one or two” electric vehicles for the European market.
It now seems only one EV will be born of this short-lived union since Ford says its future models will all be based on a new platform that is currently being developed by its engineers in Dearborn.
In the meantime, not a lot of information is known about the upcoming EV except that it will be based on the MEB platform that also underpins the Volkswagen ID.4 and the Audi Q4 e-Tron.
In addition, the company released a teaser image, but only the general silhouette and “hockey stick” daytime running lights are shown.
This model is unlikely to be sold in North America as the primary goal of the partnership with Volkswagen was to accelerate Ford’s entry into the European market with a model smaller than the Mach-E.
Despite having only created one model, the Ford-VW partnership is expected to double the American automaker’s volume in Europe, with sales expected to reach 1,2 million units over the next six years.
According to Martin Sander, general manager of Ford Model e in Europe, moving back to an in-house platform will give Ford more control over its future EVs and it should allow it to better compete in different market segments across the world.
This is because the new platform will be scalable in order to adapt to different types of vehicles, not only compact SUVs.
Sander also said that Ford is open to collaborating with VW or another automaker again depending on what the EV market looks like in the coming years.
Source: Electrek
