Ford Poaches Rivian, Tesla, Lucid Employees For Its Low-Cost EV Program

Ford has hired dozens of workers from EV manufacturers for a new EV program to develop affordable electric vehicles. Ford hopes the new EVs will allow it to better rival Chinese competitors.

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The carmaker’s chief executive, Jim Farley, confirmed work on a low-cost EV platform in January, revealing Ford had formed a “skunkworks” team headed by former Tesla and Ford Advanced EV development boss Alan Clarke.

Read: Ford Scraps EV Certification Program Allowing All Dealers To Sell Electric Cars

Over the past year, the size of the team developing these new models has swelled to around 300. TechCrunch reports that as many as 50 have come from Rivian, more than 20 previously worked at Tesla, and roughly a dozen have been brought in from Canoo. Additionally, the team includes former workers from Lucid and Apple’s canceled EV program. Ford has also hired two aerodynamicists from Formula 1.

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The hub for this team is in Irvine, California, and it’s understood that hiring accelerated at the start of this year. One recent hire was for a senior mechanical design engineer who worked on Tesla’s gigacasting team. It also hired Canoo’s former vice president of engineering in May and snapped up some of the workers let go by Rivian in February. Ford has also hired people from eVTOL firms, including Joby, Archer, and Supernal.

“The Ford Advanced EV team is part of a global effort to build focused technology and product development teams local to the best talent centers,” Ford’s chief EV, digital and design officer Doug Field told TechCrunch. “This team is leading the development of breakthrough EV products and technologies.”

Many employees of this “skunkworks” team also come from Auto Motive Power, an energy management startup Ford acquired last year.

“We made a bet in silence two years ago,” Farley said of the team earlier this year. “We developed a super-talented skunkworks team to create a low-cost EV platform. It was a small group, small team, some of the best EV engineers in the world, and it was separate from the Ford mothership. It was a start-up.”

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