Ford EV/SDV platform chief exits as OEM reckons with China

Doug Field, an industry veteran who joined Ford in 2021 to helm its electric vehicle and technology transformation, has confirmed his departure from the automaker effective May 2026. His exit comes alongside an announcement that Ford will merge his unit—covering electric vehicles (EVs), software, connectivity and design—with its global industrialisation operations under Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra.

Field, a veteran of both Tesla and Apple, spent five years at Ford amid a period of rapid and intense industry upheaval. The biggest disruption, of course, was electrification—a series of technologies that the automaker now plans to rein in its ambitions on. A US$19.5bn writedown was recorded in December 2025 as it abandoned several next-generation EV programmes and an advanced electrical architecture project he led. The cancellation of the F-150 Lightning and the retreat from multiple electrification commitments mean many of the programmes Field either himself initiated or directly oversaw did not survive his tenure.

His most durable contribution could yet prove to be the universal EV platform being developed by a California-based skunkworks team, targeting a US$30,000 electric pickup for production at the Louisville Assembly Plant in 2027 and several additional sub-US$40,000 models through the rest of the decade. Alan Clarke, a fellow Tesla alumnus who led the technical development of the platform, has been named head of advanced development and will continue overseeing the project. 

Clarke’s promotion highlights that, despite Field’s departure, the brains behind Ford’s highly ambitious new platform remain very much present. While the precise reasons for his exit are not known, it appears to be a structural move—merging Field’s team into Galhotra’s industrialisation group—signalling that the design phase is complete and execution is now the priority. In this sense, the transition is well-timed.

From Ford’s perspective, the universal EV platform is an explicit response to Chinese EV makers, whom Chief Executive Jim Farley has repeatedly described as building models US automakers simply cannot currently match on price. To be sure, Farley’s public position on China has been remarkably inconsistent. On 14 April, he told Fox News—known to be a fixture of President Donald Trump’s media diet—that Chinese automakers “should not” be allowed into the US market and that their arrival would be “devastating”. 

By Wednesday, speaking to reporters about the Field reorganisation, Farley appeared to reverse his language for a different target audience. Bloomberg had him emphasising that Ford “values its Chinese partnerships” and, actually, plans to expand them. Of course, the reversal is less a contradiction than a compressed expression of Ford’s actual position: the company licences CATL battery technology for the very platform it describes as the US’ answer to Chinese competition. 

Ford actually appears to be angling to deepen its China ties. Three separate reports—from Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Reuters, respectively—indicate partnership talks with Xiaomi and Geely, as well as discussions with Trump administration officials about a potential joint venture model for Chinese OEMs to operate in the US. On the latter two, Ford did not issue an explicit denial; regarding the Xiaomi tie-up, both companies categorically did.

Field was brought in on the premise that Silicon Valley methods could transform how Ford builds cars, effectively future-proofing it against threats from China. His record, ultimately, is mixed but not negligible: the universal platform exists, Alan Clarke remains, and the 500-person team that developed remains intact. 

What Field could not resolve—and what Clarke and Galhotra now inherit—is whether Ford’s cost structure can actually reach the blend of price and technology prowess needed to compete with automakers who built their advantages over a decade of extensive state support and vertical integration.