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Ford Model e unit announces massive expansion of EV initiative in Europe: 7 new EVs by 2024
Ford’s electric vehicle unit — known as Model e — announced today that it would take massive steps to expand its electric vehicle project in Europe. Ford, which recently split its electric vehicle and combustion engine businesses into two divisions, is aiming to roll out seven new electric vehicles in Europe by 2024 with an annual production capacity of 600,000 vehicles by 2026.
Ford announced the expansion plan today, recognizing the accelerating pace of electrification in the European market. “I am delighted to see the pace of change in Europe – challenging our entire industry to build better, cleaner, and more digital vehicles. Ford is all-in and moving fast to meet the demand in Europe and around the globe,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement. “This is why we have created Ford Model e – allowing us to move at the speed of a start-up to build electric vehicles that delight and offer connected services unique to Ford and that are built with Ford-grade engineering and safety.”
Ford’s Model e division aims to take advantage of a Tesla-like business model that completely separates the electric vehicle projects from the traditional combustion engine powertrains that Ford built its legacy on. As one of the most-committed legacy automakers in the transition to electrification, Ford recently announced it would commit to a production goal of 600,000 EVs by the end of 2023.
In Europe, electric vehicles have become extremely popular, becoming a more common choice of consumers than combustion engine vehicles in some regions. Ford is turning some focus toward this market as it is likely to be one of the biggest catalysts to EV sales company-wide. Ford said it expects annual sales in Europe to exceed 600,000 units in 2026, reaffirming its intention to deliver a 6 percent EBIT margin in Europe in 2023.
“Our march toward an all-electric future is an absolute necessity for Ford to meet the mobility needs of customers across a transforming Europe,” Ford of Europe Chairman Stuart Rowley said. “It’s also about the pressing need for greater care of our planet, making a positive contribution to society and reducing emissions in line with the Paris Climate Agreement.”
Seven New EVs by 2024
With the Mustang Mach-E already having a successful introduction into the European market, Ford will also welcome the E-Transit to the region in Q2 2022. By 2024, Ford plans to introduce seven additional models to its electric lineup in Europe. It will include three new passenger vehicles and four new commercial cars.
In 2023, Ford will begin production of an all-new passenger EV. The company says it will be a “medium-sized crossover, built in Cologne with a second electric vehicle added to the Cologne production line-up in 2024.” Ford will also introduce an electric version of the Ford Puma. It will be produced in Craiova, Romania, starting in 2024.
Ford, which recently split its electric vehicle and combustion engine businesses into two divisions, is aiming to roll out seven new electric vehicles in Europe by 2026 with an annual production capacity of 600,000 vehicles. (Credit: Ford)
Ford is Europe’s top-selling commercial vehicle brand, and the company plans to introduce several new electric models of its Transit van — “the all-new Transit Custom one-tonne van and Tourneo Custom multi-purpose vehicle in 2023, and the smaller, next-generation Transit Courier van and Tourneo Courier multi-purpose vehicle in 2024.”
“These new Ford electric vehicles signal what is nothing less than the total transformation of our brand in Europe – a new generation of zero-emission vehicles, optimized for a connected world, offering our customers truly outstanding user experiences,” Rowley added.
Ford’s Cologne, Germany EV Hotspot
Ford also said that the first all-electric passenger vehicle to come out of the new Electrification Centre in Cologne will be a five-seat, medium-sized crossover. Crossovers are a widely popular body style and accounted for 58 percent of all Ford passenger vehicles sold in Europe in 2021. Ford plans to unveil the name and design of the new crossover in 2022. Production will begin in 2023.
Ford’s Cologne Electrification Center (Credit: Ford)
Additionally, Ford said its total investment in Cologne is expected to be $2 billion with the investment including plans for a new battery assembly facility that will begin production in 2024. The automaker projects at least 1.2 million vehicles produced at the Cologne Electrification Centre by 2030.
New battery partnership with SK On Co., Ltd., and Koç Holding
Ford announced that it also signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding for a new, industry-leading joint venture in Turkey with battery manufacturers SK On Co., Ltd. and Koç Holding. The plant will be located near Ankara, the country’s capital, and will manufacture high-Nickel Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC) cells for assembly into battery array modules. Nickel cells have been a focus of many large automakers transitioning to electric cars, as it is widely available. However, surging prices of the metal have contributed to a potential delay in these plans, at least in the short term.
Production is expected to start as early as mid-decade, Ford said, with annual capacity likely to be between 30 and 45 Gigawatt hours.
Ford said the investment will also be supported by the Turkish Government and will benefit large and small commercial vehicle operators across Europe, all while decreasing CO2 emissions.
EV Production Boost in Romania
Ford will also introduce an electric version of its best-selling European vehicle, the Puma. European customers will be able to purchase an all-electric version of the vehicle in 2024. Additionally, the Transit Courier and Tourneo Courio will be produced a the plant in 2023, with all-electric versions being offered the following year.
Ford’s joint venture with Koç Holding, known as Ford Otosan, will assume ownership of the Craiova, Romania plant. “We welcome this opportunity to grow our joint venture with Koc Holding and leverage this strategic partnership to better utilize our resources and know-how in Romania,” Rowley said. “Ford Craiova is today a strong success story, and we believe that through Ford Otosan’s experience and expertise in electrification and commercial vehicles it can reach even higher levels of achievement.”
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
News
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s release in Europe is set to be delayed by at least a few months.
The European Union will not vote on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on October 6. The draft agenda for the 119th meeting of the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Netherlands’ Article 39 request, not a decision. The next scheduled TCMV session is in December, which is now the earliest date a bloc-wide vote could occur.
Tesla Europe had pointed to October 6 as a possible EU-wide vote after the Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted the first European type approval on April 10.
That approval, under UN Regulation 171 plus an Article 39 exemption in EU Regulation 2018/858, is the legal file other member states have been recognizing one by one. The same committee has already discussed the request twice without voting.
Elon Musk’s reply to the delay was a single word: “Sigh.”
Sigh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2026
Seven EU countries have now cleared FSD Supervised on their own roads: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. Those seven states represent about 53 million people, or roughly 12 percent of the EU population. An EU-wide authorization still needs a qualified majority: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population, about 292 million people.
Germany, France, Italy, and Spain remain the decisive markets. France has already rejected the current system; several other governments have flagged speed-limit compliance as the main sticking point.
The safety case Tesla is putting in front of those governments is now public. On September 1, Tesla Europe said FSD Supervised was in use by more than 70,000 customers, covering over 1 million kilometers a day, and was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU public roads.
An earlier mid-year cut of the same fleet data, covering 65 million kilometers in five approved countries, put the collision advantage at 5.2 times, with zero highway collisions over 41.9 million kilometers. Tesla also reported far fewer automatic emergency braking events, harsh accelerations, and hard swerves than in comparable manual Tesla driving. Those figures are company-reported, not independently audited.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
The public-health backdrop is harder to dispute. European countries recorded about 19,400 road deaths in 2025, or roughly 53 a day, most of them attributed to human error. FSD Supervised is not unsupervised autonomy; the driver remains legally responsible. But the software is already legal and in daily use across seven member states.
Until TCMV votes, the rest of the EU remains a patchwork: available in Prague and Amsterdam, locked behind review in Paris and Berlin. December is now the next chance to close that gap.
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
