An Australian road trip has seen Ford CEO Jim Farley sample plug-in hybrid utes from BYD and GWM – and he says he can see the appeal.
The global CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, has revealed he has driven the BYD Shark 6 and GWM Cannon Alpha plug-in hybrid utes on a flying visit to Australia this week.
And he has come away impressed with the Chinese upstarts – provided you don't need to use them for "real work".
The Ford CEO has been vocal in his appreciation of Chinese cars, admitting in 2024 he drove a Xiaomi SU7 electric sedan for six months in the US and "[didn't] want to give it up".
Now Farley has added the Ford Ranger PHEV's two main rivals in Australia, the Shark 6 and Cannon Alpha PHEV, to the roster of Chinese vehicles he's driven.
"I spent three days driving LandCruiser 70s, the Shark, the Great Wall product – the PHEV," Farley told media including Drive at the Australian Grand Prix, where Ford is debuting as an engine partner of the Red Bull Racing team.
"They're different. How I make of it, they're totally different animals. The Shark is a ute, but if you put 500kg in the back, it's not a Ranger, it's not a HiLux.
"But for someone who doesn't do that every day, and they want electrification, you know, it's a pretty competitive product. I have no idea how they make money when we tear it apart."
Farley had similar things to say about the GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV, which has an even lower payload than the BYD, but retains traditional four-wheel-drive and low-range gearing like its Ford competitor.
"The Great Wall is a very competitive product. And I've talked to a lot of customers of both, and those customers are very educated," he said.
"Yet again, you know, they haven't been doing it like our Ranger or the HiLux for decades, so they don't have all the chassis [knowhow], all the towing and payload, and all the experience.
"They don't have all the upfitters, you know – so they're coming at it with a huge deficit. But it's a good, solid, competitive product."
The Ford boss said he "much prefer[s]" a Ranger for "real work".
"It's no competition. But not everyone in Australia buys a Ranger to do the kind of work that we design it for. There's a lot of different kinds of customers here."
"They can climb uphill, but it doesn't last very long. For a while they climb it up, but they then stop; the system protection kicks in. My feeling is that the electrified off-road vehicle development is a challenge," Mitsubishi engineering fellow Kaoru Sawase told Australian media last year.
"On the other hand, we have a lot to learn from the Chinese manufacturers in a sense that, until the protection system kicks in, the performance for the electric motor controlling the tyres is quite good ... We have to learn from that."
The Ford CEO said Chinese car brands have turned the market for the type of utes popular in Australia – classified as mid-size pick-ups globally – on its head.
"The reality is that ... with Great Wall especially, the competitive landscape has completely changed now in the last three, four years globally," Farley told Australian media.
"Body-on-frame medium pickup trucks are a global profit pool that every Chinese company is looking at, and so we need our best and the brightest."
Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines at a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family. Highly Commended - Young Writer of the Year 2024 (Under 30) Rising Star Journalist, 2024 Winner Scoop of The Year - 2024 Winner
