Ford throws shade at Tesla over quality, calls its electric vehicles a ‘compromise’

The head of Ford’s electrification effort has thrown some serious shade at Tesla over quality issues and promises that you won’t have to make that compromise with Ford’s electric vehicles.

Darren Palmer, one of the original members of Ford’s Edison team tasked to design the brand’s first all-electric vehicle and now the head of development for Ford and Lincoln’s battery-electric vehicle, had some interesting comments in a new interview.

In an interview with Autoblog in the margins of the launch of the Mustang Mach-E, Palmer said that electric vehicle buyers until now had to compromise and accept some “flaws”.

He said:

“The doors fit properly, the plastics and other materials color-match, the bumpers don’t fall off, the roof doesn’t come off when you wash it, the door handles don’t get stuck in cold weather. …”

While the executive didn’t mention Tesla by name, several of those quality issues have often been associated with the brand.

He says that buyers will not have to make these “compromises” with Ford’s electric vehicles.

Electrek’s Take

It would be easy to just respond with a “yeah but” and list all the things that Tesla does better than Ford when it comes to electric vehicles because there are plenty.

Tesla vehicles have longer range, can charge faster, and are more efficient than Ford’s new Mustang Mach-E.

But Palmer also has a point here. If we can know that he is talking about Tesla without even mentioning it by name and just listing a bunch of quality issues that we associate with the brand, it tells us that Tesla has some quality issues.

Tesla’s fast pace has resulted in some quality problems and we have especially seen those in early new vehicle launches, like with the Model Y in 2020, and during Tesla’s end-of-quarter pushes when the automaker tries to deliver massive numbers of cars in very short periods of time.

The automaker should definitely work on that, but at the same time, this fast pace is also what pushes innovation and results in Tesla achieving industry-leading specs with its EVs, especially when it comes to efficiency and range.

Some people will always prefer that while others will prefer to go with Ford and potentially avoid those quality issues.

I think both companies should look at each others to improve here and I’m excited for the potential of the new EV competition to push the overall quality of new electric vehicles higher.