Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley said the automaker's focus on connected, commercial electric vehicles will lead to repeat business and new revenue opportunities for its dealers.
Farley, speaking at the NADA Show via a prerecorded interview with outgoing NADA Chairman Rhett Ricart, said Ford was deliberate in picking battery electric versions of its Transit van and F-150 pickup to be among the first in the EV wave.
"It's what makes us different," he said.
The E-Transit will go on sale this year, while the F-150 EV is expected to come out by the middle of 2022. General Motors recently announced its plans for a commercial EV van, and Mercedes-Benz is expected to bring its eSprinter van to the U.S. as early as 2023.
Businesses, Farley noted, don't experience the range anxiety that can turn retail buyers away from EVs because they often know exactly how far their fleets travel in a given day. He said retailers can capture new revenue from EV charging subscriptions and remote repair work.
"I think what we're learning is this transition will take time and there will be new opportunities for dealers," he said.
Among the biggest opportunities will be data from connected modems, which Ford has installed on all new vehicles. The company this month inked a six-year partnership with Google Inc. to better collect and interpret that data to predict maintenance needs or offer trade-ins to customers.
"The connectivity is the biggest game-changer," Farley said. "It really rewards all of us to work on loyalty, not this conquest model a lot of us have worked on."
Ford has placed more emphasis on retaining customers in recent years as it works to improve quality, an area where Farley said data can be key.
"The issue for us is making sense of it all," he said. "The error codes that come off, is it a failed latch or a door that hasn't been closed correctly? We're starting to figure that out. For a commercial customer, we can say, 'Your battery is going to go dead tomorrow. You need a new battery.' What a value that's going to be for the customers and the dealers."
