Doug Field is leaving Ford next month. The former Apple executive spent five years leading Ford's electric vehicle and software division before stepping down. Alan Clarke, an ex-Tesla engineer who runs Ford's California skunkworks lab, is being promoted to vice president of advanced development projects and will continue developing the Universal Electric Vehicle Platform.
The timing is brutal. Field's exit comes less than five months after Ford announced a $19.5 billion writedown on its EV investments. That number alone tells you everything about the pressure this division has been under and why leadership is changing hands.
The full story is worth reading for what it reveals about the internal structure of Ford's EV push, Clarke's specific mandate, and what the UEV Platform is actually supposed to accomplish. The writedown is the headline, but the reorganization underneath it is the real story.
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