The interview comes during an EV roadtrip that Farley took in California recently. Unlike many polished and controlled EV roadtrips executives go on, Farley’s trip was pretty raw. He wasn’t going everywhere in a suit with a big production crew and bodyguards in tow, and he was happy to meet with bloggers, influencers, and creators along the way.
One example he gave was an Electrify America charging station located near a Tesla charging station. At the Electrify America station, people were out talking to each other, helping each other deal with charging struggles, and spending a lot more time waiting for both a turn to charge and the charging session itself. Over at the Tesla station, people were just sitting in their cars because there was nothing much to talk about and not a lot of time spent waiting.
Finally, he shared his thoughts on Ford’s transition to NACS from CCS. It really came down to Ford’s own experience struggling with CCS connectors, which he calls “committee-designed”. Ford’s team figured out that the Tesla connector was just engineered better, which then led to discussions with Tesla, which were an on-and-off thing for years.