BlueOval City, Ford's electric vehicle and battery manufacturing campus in West Tennessee, begins production in 2025, and will be home to Ford’s second-generation electric truck, codenamed Project T3, and will be capable of producing 500,000 EV trucks a year at full production. Site shown as of March 10, 2023. Photo courtesy of Ford.

Leader & Laggard of the Week: Ford & Germany

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A large part of our role in the media is to highlight cleantech leaders, and another large part is to bring to light climate and cleantech laggards. With that in mind, we’re starting a new series — a weekly look at a company, person, organization, or country that stood out in a good way and a look at one that stood out in a not-so-good way.


Leader: Ford

Designed to be radically efficient and carbon neutral, the truck plant on the BlueOval City site will be capable of producing 500,000 electric trucks a year at full production.

The first one was an obvious choice for me. Ford has just updated us on the development of its EV-focused BlueOval City, announced a cool new electric truck, and revealed a new electric Explorer (not for the US market, unfortunately). Furthermore, Ford is splitting out its EV business (which is losing money right now, but you have to start somewhere) when reporting its finances and corporate developments. Ford will now be reporting its finances “by Ford Blue (iconic gas, hybrid vehicles), Ford Model e (breakthrough EVs) and Ford Pro (commercial products, services), not by regional markets.” This may not sound like a big deal, but it’s a huge step in shifting the company to a fully electric vehicle company (eventually).

Ford Explorer EV
Photo courtesy of Ford

You can read more CleanTechnica stories about Ford’s EV moves this week here:

Honorable mentions: There were a few companies that seemed to deserve honorable mention. Those companies are 7-Eleven, BYD, and Volvo Trucks. Here’s why:


Laggard: Germany

Unfortunately, and surprisingly, the entity that jumped out to me as laggard of the week was Germany. Germany? Really? Why? Because Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany, is trying to push e-fuels on the European Union rather than simply sticking with the clear cleantech solution of electric vehicles.  “The German Chancellor is in a stand-off with the EU over his insistence that cars powered by e-fuel are allowed to be sold after a 2035 phase-out date for combustion engines,” Transport & Environment writes.

Alex Keynes, clean vehicles manager at T&E, added: “Chancellor Scholz is threatening to pull the rug from under the European Green Deal for the sake of saving polluting combustion engines. The higher cost of e-fuels will mean that only the wealthy could afford them while everyone else could be pushed into getting around the rules and using fossil petrol instead. Motorists and the climate will be the losers.” Not cool.


We intend to make “Leader & Laggard of the Week” a regular feature here on CleanTechnica. Let us know if you ever have any suggestions for either of these distinctions.


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

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