Ford's pivot on battery strategy is a lesson for rest of industry

Anyone can see the contrast between Ford CEO Jim Farley's big investment announcement last week to make battery cells, battery packs and electric vehicles in Tennessee and Kentucky and his predecessor's strategy of buying batteries from suppliers — "off the shelf," so to speak.

One could easily deride the former chief, Jim Hackett, as a fool who failed to recognize that batteries and motors are the engines and transmissions of the next generation of vehicles.

He may have been a successful CEO at Steelcase, one might say, but he was a neophyte in the byzantine knife fight that is the global auto industry.

Sure, he may have been wrong, but he wasn't dumb.

When Tesla built its so-called Gigafactory in Nevada with Panasonic in 2014, it was in part because there was no other efficient way to get the battery supply the company needed.

Half a decade later, with so much of the global industry pivoting to electric vehicles, Hackett might have seized a second-mover advantage by angling Ford to buy the latest and greatest batteries available without all the upfront investment.

But even just a year in at CEO, Farley benefits from perspective gained through time and experience.

Here in late 2021 — in the throes of a chip shortage that is frustrating would-be vehicle buyers as well as manufacturers and retailers — it's as clear as ever that controlling key links in the supply chain is worthwhile, even if it ties up capital.

Those who mock Hackett's "error" inflate the kind of insular arrogance that can block the industry from learning quickly as it works through this profound technological transformation.

Only 2.5 percent of new light vehicles registered in the U.S. in the first half of this year were electric.

By the time the market surpasses 10 percent and 25 percent and finally reaches the 40 to 50 percent that President Joe Biden wants to see by 2030 — whenever that may actually happen — the auto industry will be able to look back at 2021 and find a vast array of things that turned out differently than smart people anticipate today.

In threatening times of constant and profound change, it might be fun to point fingers and laugh at outsiders when they make a misstep. Those who survive will be the ones who continue to adapt as the new industry unfolds.

As technologies change, strategies and tactics must evolve with them.

Look at Asbury's seismic acquisition of the Larry H. Miller Dealerships. As buy-sell adviser George Karolis noted, Asbury previously owned stores in the West but sold them to focus on the Southeast region.

Now that online shopping is more advanced and retailers can more effectively operate on a nationwide basis, Asbury bought the Utah-based Miller organization.

What's perhaps most shocking about Ford's $7 billion investment — augmented with $4.4 billion from battery partner SK Innovation — is that the 1 million EVs a year that could be powered by those factories may be only half of what the Blue Oval company needs to meet its goals for 2030.

More billions will be spent — and corporate strategies questioned — before the industry kicks its internal-combustion habit.

On electric vehicles' long journey from curiosity to transportation mainstay, everyone at every level of the industry will need to keep reexamining their assumptions about how it will play out.

The reality may surprise you.