$29B Disaster: Ford Cancels EVs, Kills Battery Plant, Turns to Profitable Gas Cars
Ford has taken a $29 billion hit. $29 billion. It's retreating from EVs. It has canceled the Ford F-150 electric pickup truck. And honestly, this is great for China. If Ford wanted to help China, it is doing it more than it ever could have imagined possible. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the channel. I'm Sam Evans. You're watching the Electric Viking, and this is a a real sad day for American manufacturing and for Ford in general. US car giant Ford is taking a massive US $19.5 billion hit. That's Australian 29.3 billion to its profits so that it can pivot away from electric vehicles and back towards internal combustion and hybrid vehicles. This will see the death, the literal extinction of a lot of work they've been doing. the Ford F-150 Lightning, the upgraded version, their electric SUV, uh, sevenseater, um, all of this has ended. There's also going to be a dissolution, as in they are cancelling their battery joint venture with South Korea's SK on. So Ford is saying, you know what, game over for electric vehicles in the United States. The decision by Ford to turn tail and run away from EVs says the driven has been a long time coming with lower thanex expected sales, increased costs, and the schizophrenic nature of American policy under the second Trump administration all contributing to soften the company's EV ambitions. So yes, the US administration, the Trump administration has had a significant effect on Ford's decision here. The scale of Ford's new plans has taken almost everyone by surprise. I was shocked to see this. I I think this is the end of Ford. I think Ford is going to have maybe they'll sell cars in America and that's it. But the truth is electric cars will take over the entire planet within 10 years. And if Ford is not going to be part of that, then they're not going to be part of the automotive industry. So this is really really shocking. Ford is building the new decisive deployment redeployment of capital. This is what they say. This is this is a a direct quote from Ford. Decisive redeployment of capital as an effort to meet c customer demand and drive profitable growth and shift to higher return opportunities. So profitable growth is the key phrase here. Now legacy automakers, they're not making money selling electric cars. The Chinese are now, but um yeah, that gives legacy automakers. It basically means they're they don't like, you know, not making a profit on vehicles. They're not used to this situation. The decision to end production of select larger vehicles where the business case has eroded was blamed on lower than expected demand, high costs, and regulatory changes. Now, to be fair, Ford have canceled the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, but it wasn't really technologically all that great. I mean, if you think about it, the charging speed of say the Silverado, the General Motor Silverado, the Tesla Cybert truck is 350 kW plus. Uh the F-150 Lightning is 150. And it's not the most efficient vehicle either. So, it's not like Ford went and said, you know what, we made a great car and people weren't buying it. It was good, okay, good, okay to good. and Ford said, "Well, we're not selling enough of them and we're not making a profit, so we're just going to finish it. Cancel it. Cancel EVs." "This is a customer-driven shift to create a stronger, more resilient, and more profitable Ford," said Jim Farley, who is Ford's president and CEO. The operating reality has changed and we are redeploying capital into higher return growth opportunities for Pro, our market leading trucks and vans, hybrids, and high margin opportunities like our new battery energy storage business. Now, is Ford's new battery energy storage business really a high margin opportunity? No one knows because it's new. So, that's a real gamble there from Ford. among the electric vehicles Ford has relegated to the dust bin as in the driven says they've canled them and they've ended the the Ford F150 Lightning now has been ended and this was reported separately. It'll come back though as an e-rev. So it'll come back with a small engine uh which will not power the wheels. That engine will be used to simply generate power to repower recharge the battery which will boost the range. So, that is actually not not a bad thing. Not a bad you're going to go if you're going to go for a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, any kind of hybrid, I think the E-Rev is the best option. And I think the Ford F150 Lightning has plenty of power. It's got, in fact, it's got quite a bit of range. Adding a small electric generator engine for people who want that could be a good choice. But ending the electric version, in my opinion, wasn't the right way to go. I think just coming up with a longer range version like Chevy have with the 500 mile range Silverado would have been a better option. What do you guys think? Ford is scrapping its previously planned new electric commercial van for Europe and a planned electric commercial van for North America and the company says it will replace this with a new affordable commercial van with gasoline and hybrid variants. Scrapping these EVs uh makes way for what Ford describes as its plan to launch five new affordable vehicles by the end of the decade. None of these electric, using the word affordable again and again in its announcement. Um it just keeps repeating the word over and over trying to avoid criticism. It said it would make an affordable electric pickup truck, but that's been cancelled as well. The underlying explanation behind Ford's um decision-m is its decision to rename the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center to the Tennessee Truck Plant, which will produce new affordable gas powered trucks in 2029 and its target of 50% for hybrids, e-revs, or EVs by 2030. Um, you can't really hit 50% EVs in any way though if you're not even selling them. So yeah, Ford's basically decided hybrids are the future for the company. Ford's obsession with affordability has ensured it will continue development of its new um universal EV platform which will underpin a family of smaller affordable EVs, but um we've got no idea if that's really going to happen considering what Ford has just announced yesterday. The first car to be built on the Universal EV platform is expected to be a fully connected midsize pickup truck or fully electric I should say midsize electric pickup truck that will be assembled at the company's Louisville assembly plant in 2027. So, uh, midsize electric pickup truck be fully electric in 2027. Is that really going to happen? Based on Ford's comments, I think they're saying it is, but I'm skeptical at this point in time. You can't really trust what Ford says cuz they certainly have been changing their minds pretty quickly recently. In a separate announcement last week, Ford revealed a plan for Europe which includes a new lineup of electrified passenger vehicles. At least two are going to be built by Renault, right? And they're built based on Renault's platform. So basically, Ford are just going to be reselling Renault vehicles with Ford badges in Europe. That's their strategy there. Those EVs won't come though until 2028. Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, um embarrassingly felt he had to explain that as an American company, we as we see Europe as the front line in the global transformation of our industry. How we compete here, how we innovate, partner and invest will write the playbook for the next generation. We are committed to a vibrant future in Europe. But that future requires us to move with greater speed and efficiency than ever before. Ford will not exist in Europe within 10 to 15 years. they'll pull out of Europe. They they're dying there. They've already fired thousands and thousands of people in Europe. They've slimmed down their operations there. They've just rebranding cars from I mean, their electric SUV in Germany is actually just a Volkswagen, their Explorer. Uh now they rebadging Renaults. They're going to be gone from Europe. It's inevitable. The subtle fingerpointing at US President Donald Trump was undone by Ford's president of its European operations, Jim Borbick, who reiterated the company's increasing commitment to undermining the global electric transition by weighing in on the ongoing debate around Europe's current commitment to end the sale of all cars and vans with internal combustion engines. This is what he said. We need to enable everyone to benefit from electrification and let customers choose whether that's fully electric or hybrid. It's about making the transition more attractive and more affordable for all consumers and businesses, stimulating demand rather than stifling it. Interestingly though, Ford CEO Jim Farley sort of made some contradictory comments to that about a week ago when he said that Ford was forced by the previous US administration to sell EVs. It was forced and it also see Jim Farley also said customers were forced to buy Ford's EVs. He didn't say who forced them. I he was kind of alluding to the fact that the US administration forced them to buy them. What do you guys think about those comments? Please let me know in the comments. I in the comment section because I personally think no one in the United States was forced to buy EVs by anyone. No one was forced to make them either. Uh they were incentivized but not forced. What do you guys think? In pursuit of this supposed democratization of automotive policy, the driven says that Ford essentially called on Europe to abandon the ban on hybrid vehicles by 2035 in favor of a realistic and reliable 10-year planning horizon. So yeah, Ford joined in with Toyota and BMW to make sure that the ban on internal combustion in Europe in 20 starting in 2035 was repealed, was cancelled and it worked. Back in America, Ford's new direction has also resulted in the dissolution of its battery joint venture Blue Oval SK with South Korean company SKON. The two companies invested 11.4 billion in 2022 to build joint battery plants in Kentucky and in Tennessee. As of last week, the joint venture will be dissolved, cancelled, it's finished. Ford are walking away with the Kentucky Kentucky battery plants and SK is taking ownership of the Tennessee plant. What's going to happen there? I don't know. No one knows. What do you guys think? Separately, Ford has committed to making smaller amp hour battery cells for use in residential energy storage solutions in its Blue Oval battery park in Michigan in Marshall. So, it's going to make basically like Tesla Power Walls. This ensures the plant remains on track to begin manufacturing lithiumion phosphate prismatic battery cells in 2026 to power Ford's first affordable electric vehicles. So those lithiumion phosphate batteries are CL batteries. They're going to be that technology license from Chinese battery conglomerate CL. They're obviously the biggest battery company in the world. Their lithium phosphate batteries are fantastic. They're excellent. So, Ford will pay a small fee for every battery cell it produces in the United States to CL, like a licensing fee, but CL will help Ford uh fit out that factory and get production happening as quickly as possible. The cost for Ford's decision to abandon electric cars will cost them around 20 billion US. About 8.5 billion of this is related to cancelling its planned EV models, US 6 billion to the dissolution of its joint venture with SKON, and US 5 billion to so-called program related expenses. In other words, Jim Farley is admitting that his decisions have cost the company 20 billion US. In fact, the total will be far more than that considering the losses Ford have made on its EV program. You're probably talking about more than $30 billion US. Is Jim Farley the CEO that I thought he was? Obviously not. I got it wrong. My apologies on that one. Let me know you how you feel about all this in the comments. And thank you for watching. Bye-bye.
Ford faces a $29 billion EV setback as it cancels electric models, shuts down a major battery plant, and pivots back to profitable gasoline vehicles. This dramatic shift raises serious questions about Ford’s EV strategy and the future of legacy automakers in the electric transition.
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