42 Tuesday March 15 2022 | the times
Business
Ford is to accelerate its efforts to catch
up in the race to build electric vehicles
with seven new zero-emission cars and
vans in Europe by 2024.
However, news of the American
motor group’s electric plans, and its
decision to build no more vehicles with
internal combustion engines in Europe
by 2035, leaves big question marks over
the future of its Dagenham plant in east
London. Ford ended car production in
the UK 20 years ago and Dagenham,
once home to more than 40,000Chief of failed Wirecard
group charged with fraud
Louisa Clarence-SmithThe former chief executive of Wire-
card, the collapsed German payments
group, has been charged with fraud and
accounting manipulation.
The prosecutors’ office in Munich
claims that Markus Braun, 53, was part
of an organised criminal enterprise to
inflate revenues by using fake accounts.
Wirecard filed for insolvency in June
2020 owing €3.5 billion in one of
Europe’s biggest corporate failures. It
collapsed after revealing that €1.9 bil-
lion of cash balances were missing and
that EY, its auditor, had informed it that
“no sufficient audit evidence could be
obtained” for the cash balances on trust
accounts, which amounted to about a
quarter of the value of its balance sheet.
Wirecard was founded in 1999 and
was promoted to the Dax, Germany’sleading share index, in 2018, when it
was valued at €24 billion. Stephan von
Erffa, former head of accounting, and a
former manager in Dubai in charge of a
Wirecard subsidiary, referred to as “B”,
were also charged.
It is alleged that Wirecard’s financial
statements for 2015 to 2018 were incor-
rect as they reported revenue from out-
sourced Asia units that did not exist.
The prosecutors allege that all three
defendants knew as early as 2015 that
Wirecard was making losses and was
on the path to insolvency.
Braun is also accused of market
manipulation. A spokesman for Braun
told the Financial Times that his client
was unaware of “shadow structures”
and had learnt of them only through
the investigations. Von Erffa and the
former manager charged could not be
reached for comment.T
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thetimes.co.uk/tenFord accelerates its electric
Robert Lea Industrial Editor workers building the Ford Anglia and
latterly the Fiesta, is a shell of its former
self. It produces diesel engines for
Transit vans built in Turkey.
The giant carmaker said that its
electrification plans meant that it
would redouble its investment in van
production in Turkey and Romania,
revealing that it would build a “giga-
factory” near Ankara making batteries
for zero-emission commercial vehicles.
It will have built its last diesel-engined
van for the European market by 2035.
Britain is Ford’s biggest market in
Europe and news of its plans to step intothe electric mainstream will be
welcomed by its fans. Ford’s delay in
embracing the electric revolution has
led to it losing its crown as king of the
road in the UK. It has only one zero-
emission model on sale in Europe, the
£40,000 Mustang Mach-E, its single
most expensive car, which sold a mere
23,000 units across the whole conti-
nent last year.
For five decades, going back to the
Ford Cortina in the 1970s, Ford was
Britain’s market leader. However, in
2021 it was overtaken by Volkswagen,
which now has the electric Golf and an
ID electric sub-brand.
Ford said yesterday that it would go
into production next year with a mid-
market electric “crossover”, the
fashionable upright model-type that
has been replacing estate cars. The
company gave no more details, but the
model could effectively be the electric
replacement for the Ford Focus, which,
after the Fiesta, has been the company’s
bestselling European model.
A year later, Ford will launch an elec-
tric “sports crossover”. These vehicles,
with a single-charge journey range of
310 miles, will be built at its Cologne
plant, which is also to get its own giga-
factory. An electric version of the Ford
Puma, which has replaced the Fiesta as
the company’s bestselling car in
Europe, will be built in Romania.
The company declined to comment
on how it would replace the Fiesta and
how far it would embrace the affordable
end of the market, where it usually has
been focused.
With demand for commercial busi-
nesses to clean up their act, Ford is
going to be busier in the van market,
with four all-electric models by 2024,
starting with an E-Transit and includ-
ing vehicles that can be produced as
small minibuses or people carriers.
The company said that it was
responding to demand from the postal
and home-delivery sectors, as well as
from councils and utility companies.
Ford has been a million-a-year
vehicle seller in Europe, with the UK
accounting for more than a quarter of
that. Stuart Rowley, the Briton who is
chairman of Ford of Europe, said that
the company would be selling 600,000
all-electric vehicles by 2026 and a mil-
lion by 2030. All its cars will be zero-
emission by 2030 and its vans by 2035.
“This is nothing less than the total
transformation of our brand in
Europe,” Rowley said. “This is not a
change in our strategy. It is an accelera-
tion of our electrification plans.”US giant’s
move to pull
plug was
huge snub