Official: Ford Is Going Fully Electric In Europe By 2030

As governments around the world set targets for the end of brand new internal combustion-engined cars, major manufacturers are setting deadlines themselves. Only a couple of days ago Jaguar announced it’s to bet big on electric by going fully EV by 2025, and now, Ford has confirmed it’ll do the same for passenger cars in Europe by 2030.

This coincides with the year of the UK’s proposed ICE ban, and it’ll be made possible by hurling a billion dollars of investment at a new electric vehicle manufacturing plant in Cologne, Germany. The first cars to come off the production line will do so in 2023, and they’ll have VW blood.

As part Ford’s strategic alliance with VW, the former will borrow the latter’s MEB platform for a Puma-sized electric crossover. It’ll be a mini Mach-E in effect, with various styling cues pinched from the bigger EV.

It will still be possible to buy something of the suck, squeeze, bang, blow variety with a Ford badge on it after 2030, though, since the European target for commercial vehicles is less radical. All Ford commercial vehicle model ranges will have a zero emissions-capable option in the line up by 2024, with fully electric and plug-in hybrids anticipated to make up two-thirds of sales by 2030.

Every passenger car model by 2026, meanwhile, will be available as a plug-in hybrid or fully electric derivative. To get there, the Cologne investment is just a small part of the story - Ford intends to spend at least $22 billion on electrification by 2025.

The Mach-E Mini-Me raises questions about the future of the Fiesta, which is currently built at the Cologne plant. Killing it off seems unlikely in the short term, even though the rise of EVs will make superminis increasingly difficult to justify commercially. It is Ford’s best selling car, after all. The company may choose to shift production elsewhere, although there have also been some reports that the Fiesta will be built alongside the new BEV.