DETROIT – Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley and Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk will host a dwell, audio dialogue through Twitter Areas about accelerating EV adoption at 5:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, in accordance with a put up from Farley.

The web dialogue between rivals comes as Ford makes an attempt to ramp up manufacturing of its absolutely electrical automobiles in an try and catch as much as — or sometime surpass — Tesla’s gross sales within the phase.

Whereas Tesla nonetheless dominates the EV sector by far, Ford got here in second in absolutely electrical car gross sales within the U.S. final yr, notching gross sales of 61,575 electrical automobiles.

The Twitter Areas occasion will mark the most recent interplay between the 2 executives, who’ve a novel rivalry. They’ve every expressed admiration for the opposite, regardless of their firms competing instantly.

Musk, who leads Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, has repeatedly praised Ford as a historic American firm, lauding its capacity to keep away from chapter, in contrast to its crosstown rivals Common Motors and Chrysler in the course of the Nice Recession.

And whereas different automakers paused their advert spending on Twitter when Elon Musk took over the social media firm final yr, Ford stayed energetic on the platform. Farley has personally usually engaged his followers and followers on Twitter, too.

Farley has additionally praised Tesla for its EV management below Musk whereas trying to emulate a lot of its successes.

Ford notably beat Tesla to the pickup phase starting manufacturing of its F-150 Lightning, the electrical model of its constantly fashionable vehicles, in April 2022. Ford additionally closely benchmarked the Tesla Mannequin Y for its Mustang Mach-E crossover and adopted Tesla in value cuts of the electrical crossovers.

The timing of the Tesla and Ford leaders’ dialogue is probably going stunning to many. It comes a day after large technical glitches on Twitter Areas interfered with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis saying his presidential marketing campaign there.

It will not be the primary time a Tesla competitor has talked with or requested Musk to talk with them. In 2021, then-Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess invited Musk to name in to an inner convention with executives of the German automaker to speak innovation.