Ford Motor could make electric cars in Germany after 2023, when the life cycle of Ford’s Fiesta model is due to end, the head of the automaker’s German business informed a paper, adding he would welcome state subsidies to support the move.
“Purely hypothetically that (2023) could be a good time for it,” Gunnar Herrmann informed German business daily Handelsblatt in an interview.
He told it would take around 15 months to retool the automaker’s plant in Cologne but added it would not be worth the investment if sales of electric cars made only 30,000 or 40,000 vehicles annually.
“It will be possible if the numbers of sales are moving up more powerfully. Unfortunately, today electric cars are not especially profitable yet,” stated Herrmann.
German premium automaker BMW recently echoed Hermann’s comments, adding it would not mass produce electric vehicles until 2020 due to its current technology that is not profitable enough to scale up for volume production.
U.S. automaker Ford has strategies to invest $5 billion in electric vehicles by 2022 and bring at least 13 electric or hybrid models globally in the next five years and plans to make its first completely electric vehicle in Europe in 2020.
Herrmann suggested that the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where the automaker’s Cologne plant is situated, could offer subsidies to support the shift to electric vehicles.
“The state could do its part to initiate the structural shift, as could the federal government,” he stated.
Germany’s new coalition government prepares to ease the tax burden on drivers of electric vehicles, provide at least an extra 100,000 charge points throughout the country and subsidize car-sharing to promote a shift to greener transportation.
