The Ford Mustang Will Never Go Electric, Says Ford Boss

Ford’s CEO has offered some insight into what we can expect from the Mustang in years to come

17 May 2024

The Ford Mustang has recently celebrated its 60th birthday, and in spite of its age, it’s currently enjoying one of its biggest periods of success and popularity yet. It’s especially appealing in that it’s one of an increasingly small number of sports cars powered by a big V8 engine. Farley has already said that Ford will fight as hard as possible to keep that configuration at the heart of Mustangs for years to come, but he’s now gone a step further and told Autocar: “I can promise… that we will never make an electric Mustang.”

Farley believes that the Mustang will be able to keep V8 power for a long time yet as Ford is hard at work developing a range of full EVs that will keep its overall fleet emissions down and that the model may well adopt hybrid power later down the line for both performance and emissions reasons. Unlike Dodge, however, which is controversially launching a fully-electric version of its new Charger, Farley says “I just don’t think [electric power] would be right for Mustang.”

Farley also reckons the Mustang is now comfortably the best-selling coupe in the world, and is looking at ways in which that success can be capitalised on. This may start with further derivatives of the existing coupe and convertible models but could expand further down the line to things like a four-door saloon. He draws the line, however, at SUVs, claiming “there will never be room for a small, two-row Ford SUV with a Mustang badge stuck on it.”

Both that statement and the one about electric power seem to disregard the existence of the Mustang Mach-E electric crossover, which Farley doesn’t seem to view as part of the Mustang family.

He also questioned the need for an off-road focused Mustang coupe in the image of the Porsche 911 Dakar and Lamborghini Huracan Sterrato – “Some people think we could mix Mustang with off-road driving… but I’m not so sure about that.”

One thing we will likely see is more ultra-high-performance variants like the forthcoming GTD, and if Farley gets his way, they’ll all have a good, old-fashioned thumping V8 under the bonnet.

The first full sentence spoken by an infant Mike was a review of the ride quality of a Volvo 850. It was “Daddy’s car goes bumpy-bump on a bumpy road,” so would probably need proofreading a bit, but it was a start.