Ford Pro CEO Touts 'Big Opportunity' To Trim Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning Costs By Using LFP Batteries

Electric vehicle makers, constrained by slowing demand, are striving to make their cars affordable to cash-strapped buyers. Ford Motor Company F on its part is working on ways to trim costs and potentially pass through the benefit to consumers.

What Happened: The lithium-iron-phosphate, or LFP, battery, would come to Ford’s Mustang Mach-E and the F-150 Lightning EV pickup truck by 2023 and 2024, respectively, Ford Pro CEO Ted Cannis said in a recent Evercore Utility Conference, reported Ford Authority.

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Batteries with the LFP chemistry will be 10-15% less costly, the executive said. Although it may not have a dense chemistry, it allows more durability and more cycling, he added. Higher energy density allows EVs to travel longer without having the need to increase the size of the battery pack.

“So, it looks like a good solution for those customers who are not looking for all the density and longer range of NCM,” Cannis reportedly said. “That’s a big opportunity,” he added.

NCM, or nickel-cobalt-manganese, is expensive as it contains a similar amount of lithium as in LFP batteries and also includes cobalt, which is expensive and produced using a controversial process, SP Global said in a report.

Why It’s Important: Ford touts itself as the second-biggest U.S. EV maker and has set sights on transitioning fully to green-energy vehicles. The company announced in July 2022 that it would source LFP battery packs from Chinese vendor CATL.

The world’s biggest EV battery manufacturer will begin supplying LFP batteries to the Mustang Mach-E in 2023 and the F-150 Lightning EV in 2024, Blue Oval said then.

Price Action: Ford closed Wednesday’s session up 0.39%, at $12.79, according to Benzinga Pro data.

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