The strategy in Europe consists of three new EV models, two of them medium-sized crossover cars (to be launched in 2023 and 2024), which will be built at Ford’s Cologne factory (which currently builds the Fiesta) and which will be based on Volkswagen’s battery-electric architecture (MEB). There will also be an EV version of the successful Puma crossover, which will be built at the company’s Craiova plant in Romania, ownership of which will be handed to the Ford/Otosan Turkish joint venture. Craiova also builds the EcoSport Fiesta-based SUV, which ceases production this year.

In addition, there will be four light commercial EVs including a Turkish-built one-tonne EV Transit van and EV Tourneo Custom multi-purpose commercials slated for next year, along with a smaller Transit and Tourneo Courier EVs planned for 2024. The battery plant, touted as Europe’s largest (although that depends on your view of whether Turkey is a transcontinental, middle eastern or European country), is the result of the signing of a non-binding memorandum of understanding between SK On Co and Koc Holdings. The plant, close to Ankara, is scheduled to produce its first NMC lithium-ion battery cells for commercial vehicles in the middle of the decade.

This hardly amounts to full model range coverage which was once seen as crucial to the success of Ford of Europe. What’s more, a long term future for sites such as the Dagenham diesel factory, the massive plant at Valencia in Spain or the Cologne Fiesta plant in its entirety seem somewhat less than assured. 

As Rowley said: “We are not here to talk about these things today” – but past experience of these heavily staged Ford events is that bad news invariably follows the good.

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