Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Ford CEO Jim Farley to host Twitter Spaces talk about EVs Thursday

DETROIT – Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley and Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk volition big a live, audio treatment via Twitter Spaces astir accelerating EV adoption astatine 5:30 p.m. ET connected Thursday, according to a post from Farley.

The online treatment betwixt rivals comes arsenic Ford attempts to ramp up accumulation of its afloat electrical vehicles successful an effort to catch up to — oregon someday surpass — Tesla's sales successful the segment.

While Tesla inactive dominates the EV assemblage by far, Ford came successful 2nd successful afloat electrical conveyance income successful the U.S. past year, notching income of 61,575 electrical vehicles.

The Twitter Spaces lawsuit volition people the latest enactment betwixt the 2 executives, who person a unsocial rivalry. They person each expressed admiration for the other, contempt their companies competing directly.

Musk, who leads Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, has repeatedly praised Ford arsenic a historical American company, lauding its quality to debar bankruptcy, dissimilar its crosstown rivals General Motors and Chrysler during the Great Recession.

And portion other automakers paused their advertisement spending connected Twitter erstwhile Elon Musk took implicit the societal media institution past year, Ford stayed progressive connected the platform. Farley has personally often engaged his fans and followers connected Twitter, too.

Farley has besides praised Tesla for its EV enactment nether Musk portion attempting to emulate galore of its successes.

Ford notably beat Tesla to the pickup conception opening accumulation of its F-150 Lightning, the electrical mentation of its consistently fashionable trucks, successful April 2022. Ford besides heavy benchmarked the Tesla Model Y for its Mustang Mach-E crossover and followed Tesla successful terms cuts of the electrical crossovers.

The timing of the Tesla and Ford leaders' treatment is apt astonishing to many. It comes a time aft monolithic method glitches connected Twitter Spaces interfered with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announcing his statesmanlike run there.

It won't beryllium the archetypal clip a Tesla rival has talked with oregon asked Musk to talk with them. In 2021, then-Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess invited Musk to telephone successful to an interior league with executives of the German automaker to speech innovation.