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7 QUESTIONS

BillFord The executive chairof FordMotor Co. on

leadership, navigating EVpolitics,and what acentury-old
train statÉon says about the future ofDetroit
Michigan Central Station just re
opened after more than 30 years
of disuse. Ford led its transforma
tion into what's meant to become
amultiuse "innovation hub." Why
did you get involved in the proj
ect? I remember the train station
as m
as a young boy and. as my life pro
gressed, it just being a wreck-and
it was often the visual that accompa
nied a national story about the decay
of Detroit. I hated that. I always
thought, if I'm ever able to think of
a reason to take the station over and
revitalize it, I would love to. One day
I was driving by and I said, "What if
we could reimagine Michigan Cen
tral as the place where people come
together to make the Motor City the
Motor City again, where the future
mobility is worked on?"
What do you think this will mean
for Detroit? Prior to the '67 riots,
everything I did was in the city-my
pediatrician, my dentist. Then the
riots happened and you have many
years of not only white flight, but
frankly, white vs. Black, suburb vs.
city. There was no collaboration. The
city was shrinking. This last census,
we're growing again, which is awe
some. I think there's been so much
positive energy in Detroit in the last
six or seven years.
CEO Jim Farley recently said after
negotiations with the UAW, Ford
would be rethinking where it
builds some vehicles. What does
that mean for Ford's commitment
to Detroit? Our commitment to De
troit has never wavered, andit won't.
I've always believed that a company
that isn't making people's lives bet
ter shouldn't exist. And part of that
is taking care of the communities in
which you operate. I've got a tremen
dous relationship with our union
employees. But the business reali
ties, which both the UAW leadership
64 TIME Tune 24, 2024
You come from
a long line
of executives.
What have you
learned about
leadership
from them?
You only need a couple
things to be a really good
leader. You need to have a
very strong set of values
and lve those values, and
you have to be authentic.
And admt your mistakos
and learn from them.
economy?I think everybody's crys
tal balls are necessarily cloudy. Our
demand is still pretty strong right
now, but we're aware that credit
closely at. -AYESHA JAVED
and ourselves have to deal with,
sometimes lead us to take decisions
that short term may not look like the
most wonderful, but long term they
always work out. Look, 120 years
later, we're still here, we're growing,
and we've been adding jobs.
Where do you see electric vehicles
in Ford's future, and how are you
thinking about the competitive
landscape? One thing I've learned
in my career is, we can know direc
tionally where things are going,
we can never know timelines. Our
research shows the people who have
bought EVs, they're heavily inten
tional to buy another EV. The charg
ing infrastructure certainly I
get better, and the price to ecus
tomer has to come down dramati
cally. But I think both of those things
will happen. We've just got choice
for everybody. We're the No. 2seller
in the U.s. ofEVs. If you want hy
brids, that may be a wonderful tran
sitional technology to get you ulti
mately to full EV, and if you want an
ICE (internal combustion engine]
vehicle, we've got those too.
How have you handled political
discussions about EVs?That we
have something for everybody allows
the temperature to come down in
those conversations and then allows
a more thoughtful discussion about,
Where should we go as an industry,
what does it take to get there? What
kind of technology is needed? Do we
have the right American supply base
to deliver that technology?
What's your outlook for the U.Ss.
card delinquencies are rising. There's
some things we're looking very

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