Ford plans to be America's No. 2 EV producer in just 2 years

That Ford is taking electric vehicles seriously should come as no surprise, given all the company's announcements over the past couple of years and the effort it put into its first ground-up production electric vehicle, the Mustang Mach-E. But, according to a report Thursday by Automotive News, that may just be the beginning.

It turns out that not only does Ford intend to speed up its electrification process, it intends to do it in a hurry. Ford boss Jim Farley stated on Twitter that he expects the Blue Oval to become America's second-largest producer of electric vehicles (behind Tesla) in just two years, and that that doesn't take into account Ford's planned Blue Oval City EV hub in Tennessee.

We're approaching it like we did building ventilators & PPE for Covid. Whatever it takes, find a way.
And it's working.

We are now expecting to produce 600,000 EVs/yr globally by end of 2023. 2x our original plan.

And that’s BEFORE #BlueOvalCity & other EV sites come online.

— Jim Farley (@jimfarley98) November 18, 2021

For some context, Tesla is currently cranking out around 600,000 cars per year, so that's a big jump from Ford's current planned production capacity of around 300,000 worldwide. That giant leap in global production would get spread out over Ford's first three big EVs, the Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit, with more models to follow.

Of course, actually making that production increase happen isn't as easy as flipping a switch. Ford's Rouge Electric Vehicle Center is slated to produce the Lightning, but to boost production further, that facility would likely need to get physically larger. The Mach-E is a little easier and would involve adding another shift to the production schedule at the Mexican facility where it's built.

We'll be very excited to see how this plays out, particularly with GM and its planned onslaught of Ultium-powered electric vehicles. Will we start seeing a new golden era of competition between the Big Three like we had in the 1960s and '70s? It's not totally out of the realm of possibility.

We asked Ford for comment but didn't hear back in time for publication. We'll update this story if we hear more.