December 7, 2022: -About 65% of Ford Motor’s dealers agreed to sell electric vehicles as the firm invests billions in expanding production and sales of the battery-powered cars and trucks, the CEO said.

According to Farley, 1,920 of Ford’s almost 3,000 dealers in the U.S. is agreeing to sell EVs. He said that 80% of those dealers opted for a higher level of investment for EVs.

Ford offers its dealers the option of becoming “EV-certified” under one of two programs with anticipated investments of $500,000 or $1.2 million. Dealers in the higher tier, carrying upfront costs of $900,000, receive “elite” certification and be allowed more EVs.

Unlike crosstown rival General Motors, Ford allows dealers to opt out of selling EVs and keep selling the firm’s cars. GM is offering buyouts to Buick and Cadillac, which dealt that don’t want to invest in selling EVs.

Dealers who decided to refrain from investing in EVs may do so when Ford opens the certification in 2027.

“We are thinking that the EV adoption in the U.S. will be taking time, so we wanted to provide dealers a chance to returning,” Farley said during an Automotive News conference.

Ford’s plan to sell EVs have been a point since the firm split off its all-electric vehicle business by this year into a separate division called Model e. Farley added that the automaker and its dealers necessary to lower costs, increase gains, and deliver more consistent customer sales experiences.

On Monday, Farley reiterated that a direct-sales model is predicted to be thousands of dollars and is much cheaper for the automaker than the auto industry’s franchised system.

Wall Street pundits have viewed mainly direct-to-consumer sales as a benefit to optimize profit. Therefore, there have been growing pains for Tesla, using the sales model, when it comes to servicing its vehicles.

Ford’s current lineup of all-electric vehicles, including the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup and Mustang Mach-E, is cross-covering an e-Transit van. The automaker is anticipated to release an invocation of different EVs globally under a plan to put tens of billions of money into the technologies by 2026.