China's Geely used 800 engineers and AI to create a modular EV manufacturing system; Ford is now applying it in Spain, aiming to slash development time and costs by half without building the system itself

For decades, Western automakers entered Chinese joint ventures primarily to secure access to local buyers. That dynamic has quietly inverted at Ford's manufacturing site in Valencia, Spain, where the American brand is adopting a modular manufacturing architecture engineered by Geely. Rather than spending billions of dollars and nearly four years building a proprietary electric platform from scratch, Ford is integrating an existing Chinese engineering blueprint.