Ford will only sell electric cars in UK and Europe by 2030

Ford will stop selling cars in the UK and Europe with any form of internal combustion engine by 2030, in the most ambitious regional electrification target of any major manufacturer.

Every passenger car model will have an electric or plug-in hybrid option by 2026, but the company will go all-electric by the end of the decade, the U.S. automaker said on Wednesday.

“We expect the majority of vehicles to be battery electric already by 2026,” Ford European President Stuart Rowley told the FT.

Ford is investing $ 22 billion in electric technology by 2025 globally, and announcement makes the group the largest automaker to date to commit to selling all-electric products by 2030 in the region European.

Volvo Cars, which is smaller than Ford, plans to be fully electric in the world by 2030, while General Motors, which withdrew from Europe in 2017, predicts that all of its passenger cars will be tax-free. emissions by 2035.

Ford’s utility vehicles, which include the Transit van and Ranger pickup, will have electric and hybrid options on each model by 2024, but do not yet have a cut-off date for traditional engine sales.

He expects two-thirds of vans and pickup truck sales to be hybrid or battery-powered by the end of the decade.

Ford’s UK engine plant in Dagenham makes diesel engines that fit Transit and Ranger, which means the plant has “a very important road ahead of it,” Rowley said.

All of the manufacturer’s engine sites in Europe will be “part of the transition” to electric, he added, without specifying whether Ford will manufacture its own batteries in its current factories or continue to buy them from suppliers.

Europe is the leading market for electric vehicles, overtaking China last year as the world’s largest plug-in car market, with sales expected to increase further as EU emissions rules tighten during this decade.

One in 10 cars sold last year in Europe and the United States was electric or plug-in hybrid, as automakers increased sales to meet 2020 CO2 targets.

The UK has already pledged to phase out all sales of cars using only petrol or diesel by 2030, with a ban on the sale of all vehicles with tailpipe emissions by 2035.

Rowley declined to say when Ford would stop importing its classic muscle car, the Mustang, to Europe, but said the model was included in its pledge to phase out sales of engine-powered cars by 2030.

Ford, which will begin deliveries of the Mustang Mach-e battery-electric car to the region later this quarter, will build its first European battery model in Cologne, Germany from 2023, using Volkswagen’s electric car technology.

The pair have a global alliance to cut costs by sharing some technology on electric and autonomous systems.