Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Neil Appetel, editor and chief of the

verge and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm

talking to Jim Farley, the CEO of Little Outfit in Detroit called the Ford Motor

Company. You might have heard of it. Ford just yesterday announced the new F-150

Lightning, their first all-electric pickup truck, and the second vehicle in the

company's major push into EVs, the first of course being the Mustang Machi.

That's two of Ford's most iconic brands now electrified, and I talked to Jim

about what it means to transition Ford into being an EV company, competing with

Tesla, and how to build a charging network around the world that can support its

efforts. Ford also just announced a major deal with Google to use Android as the

operating system in its cars, and I wanted to know what pushed the company in

that direction, and how Jim sees our relationship to cars changing is they turn

into what are fundamentally rolling computers. How many years of software

updates should we expect? His answer surprised me. He hinted at one day being

able to upgrade the computing system of a car the way you might upgrade or

replace the engine or the shocks. Of course we also talked about the chip shortage

that's having a particularly big impact on the car industry. Ford is cutting

production by 50% this quarter because it can't get enough chips. That's because

the chips and cars are made using much older technologies. The M1 chip in a

new Mac or iPad Pro is made using a five nanometer process, but a lot of chips

and cars are made using a 55 or even 90 nanometer process. And as demand has

skyrocketed, the chip fabrication facilities using that older tech just can't

...