Ford Motor is planning additional investment of up to $20 billion in building its electric vehicles (EV), Bloomberg News reported.
Ford Motor’s investment of $10 billion to $20 billion will be over the next five to ten years and will include converting its present factories around the world to electric-vehicle production.
Under a plan dubbed Ford+ meant to have investors value it more like a technology company, the No. 2 U.S. automaker had already pledged to spend over $30 billion on EVs, including battery development, by 2030.
The latest push is being led by a former Apple and Tesla executive. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla, joined Ford last year to lead the automaker’s advanced technology and embedded systems efforts.
Major automakers from General Motors, Ford and Volvo Cars are devising strategies to grab share in the competitive EV space and fight against electric car challenger Tesla.
Ford has evaluated spinning off a small portion of its EV business as a part of the reorganization, to capture value in an electric startup environment boosted by investor sentiment.
The new plan includes hiring an unspecified number of engineers to work on concepts such as battery chemistry, artificial intelligence and EV software.