Electric vehicles, we were told, were the wave of the future, and they may yet be (see China). But what they were not was ready for mass-market adoption in the U.S. at the time the Biden administration was bribing (and then starting to “force”) consumers to buy them.
Looking back last night at some of the sources of Ford’s woes (and this is not a problem confined to that company), I found a quote by Kathy Hochul, New York’s [insert adjective of choice] governor, that did not strike me as a sign of consumer excitement about EVs.
From Electrek (September 29, 2022):
New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul announced Thursday there will be “no more excuses” not to buy an electric vehicle after directing the State Department of Environmental Conservation to take significant action to accelerate the state’s transition to clean transportation to protect the environment.
No more excuses.
And then there were signs that Ford was moving away from a focus on car buyers — traditionally an, uh, important factor in a car manufacturer’s success.
Axios noted that Ford was ceasing production of its F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck, which is being reborn as a hybrid known as an extended-range EV, or EREV, a format that likely has a good future ahead of it. This change may also mean that the Explorer can do what some of those pesky car buyers expected of it.
From Axios:
Despite initial high demand, F-150 Lightning buyers quickly learned that towing a boat or trailer with an electric pickup truck dramatically reduced their driving range.
I don’t have a truck, a boat, a trailer, or even a car, but to me this would seem to be a flaw.
Who else seemed to agree?
Well, Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO came close:
“These really expensive $70,000 electric trucks, as much as I love the product, they didn’t make sense,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told CNBC.
Oh.
Robert Bryce, who has been on Ford’s case for a long time, goes forensic (again) on the company:
Through the first three quarters of 2025, Ford’s EV losses have totaled $3.6 billion. Thus, since 2022, the company’s EV losses have totaled $15.6 billion. Add in the write down of $19.5 billion, and the cost of this colossal blunder comes out to $35.1 billion! For reference, since 2022, Ford’s net income has totaled $11.1 billion. Put another way, since 2022, Ford’s losses on its EVs are more than three times the amount it made in profit!
The losses aren’t just financial. The company also announced that all 1,600 employees at its new battery plant in Glendale, Kentucky, will be laid off. It’s not clear how many of those workers will be rehired as the facility is converted to make batteries for data centers and utility applications. Furthermore, given cutthroat competition from existing battery giants such as CATL, BYD, LG, Panasonic, and others, it’s not clear how Ford will ever make money in that business. . . .
Ford is a historic company. It spends millions per year on market research. And yet, Farley and his colleagues didn’t understand their market, and that lack of understanding has cost the company $35 billion. Ford’s EV disaster will go down as one of the biggest fiascos in modern automobile history.
Bryce’s comment about not understanding the market may, in a way, be too harsh. Ford, despite the contrary evidence of the feeble F-150, probably understood its traditional customers pretty well. However, management clearly decided that, as customers, car buyers ranked behind the government. It was the government that was handing them cash, it was government that was setting the rules, and it was government that the company had to please. The government was its “market.”
The result?
Disaster.
Industrial policy is what it is.