Ford trims EV battery orders as losses swell to over $100k per electric car

amen brother. give us the kei trucks!

"A small truck is what everyone wants. The old shit box pickups that could haul a sheet of plywood were amazing. Bring those back, make them cheep, dont pile on nonsense features. I'll buy one."

I agree. I am so tired of watching car commercials. I spend a lot of time watching NBA with my elderly mother. Cars and trucks splashing through the mud in the middle of no where, driving to fast on empty streets, and other dumb stuff (often with disclaimers about professional driver and closed courses). <hyperbole>Cars are just money sinks</hyperbole>.

I would like something reasonably priced, reasonably maintainable, and can get me and whatever I am carrying down the road. It would also be nice that I do not need to log into some server to drive (or fuel up) or to unlock some feature.

My family has a classic Toyota T100 pickup. Aside from a few bits of old plastic that have broken down, it's great: reliable, comfortable, small enough to drive and park in the city (most of the time), big enough to carry useful loads, strong enough to pull a trailer, zero digital bullshit. I think an electric version of this vehicle would be a real winner.

There is zero fucking chance Ford starts selling a $25k electric truck. I’d bet my last dollar.

That probably includes one-off development and manufacturing costs

You're highlighting the absurdity of claiming the $100k loss per vehicle - except for Tesla, the auto industry is one of the few that amortizes all of their R&D for a new model into the COGS. So if Ford spends $1 billion on R&D and $1 billion on advertising for a new model they expect to sell for 10 years, they'll claim $200M/year in expense - so if they only sell 1 car with an actual materials cost of $25k - in their financials, that car will "cost" $200,025,000.

New production line and tooling fixed costs are included in the per vehicle costs. Ford is missing their delivery estimates so the fixed costs get spread out across significantly less vehicles.

Probably includes R&D and plant setup. I am not an accountant, but under GAAP (most common set of accounting rules), I have heard that a lot of R&D is treated as an expense.

Because among other reasons, CAFE standards force quotas via mandated averages, which leads to weird incentives and unexpected results (like EPA regs resulting in larger, not smaller, trucks).

If you're a company that needs to hit an mpg average, and fed rules allow absurd conversion on calculated equivalent empg, then your end up with the market we see today: Inexpensive to make SUVs and Trucks being turned into luxury products to justify absurd price increases, just to offset the losses from hitting ev/high-mpg quotas. (Which are relatively expensive to manufacture and sell for less).

This upside down market was predicted years ago, and has been moving in this direction for 20+ years. It was only a matter of time till profit-margin turned to loss-margin.

If it keeps going they'll approach prices practically giving EVs away in order keep selling their other vehicles that actually make a profit.

Tangent: from a sustainability engineering perspective, the lifetime energy costs/consumption of EVs is heavily front-loaded compared to iceVs. You pay more upfront (in both energy and $s) manufacturing the batteries and electric motors, whereas ice vehicles are cheaper to make but use/waste more energy in-use (per fillup).

A lot of (economic) market and regulatory forces are being pushed/pulled beyond limits to get to a desired result. That's why it doesn't make sense, prima facia.

Not to mention the dealerships don't want to sell these things, they fear the changes Ford wants to implement with structure to pricing and the whole dealership concept.

I don't understand this. Batteries may be better on the environment than gas, but they are impact-free. If you care about the environment, get the smallest car you can manage with. A larger battery means you are using more resources thus slowing down the number of electric cars that can get built. You are burning energy just dragging that larger batter around. Get a small car for city driving. Rent a gas car when you need the range.

If it's just a toy, then it's just better to not buy it at all. And if you don't care about the environment why care if it's electric?

I don't have the numbers on hand, but I'm certain a used Smart car is better for the planet than buying a new Tesla.

I tried to drive one. The huge screen seems to be a mistake. The car had none of the smart features of the Korean cars.

Why would anyone buy one while clearly better EVs exist? The car itself seems so boring when compared with for instance a Kia.

Genuinely curious as to why? Is it just the name/brand? Do you intend to own it for very long? IMO you stack the mach-e up to anything that is price or feature comparable (ICE or EV) and it's nothing but alarm bells. The common attributes among happy mach-e buyers in my experience is that they 1) hate tesla 2) just want to go fast 3) lease a new car every 3 years and most importantly 4) are susceptible to salesmen (See #3).

F150 Lightning EV is another story; it's a good platform although I have no idea why they made the acceleration curves so awful; It "drives like a truck" but I am not paying it a compliment there; the simulated engine/transmission lag is just the worst. You also basically still can't buy it so there's also that.

Ford has a very long way to go.

At least the American brands have been useless and uncompetitive for decades. They were fading before the Great Recession as Japanese manufacturers were pushing them out of many segments, then got a second lease on life with all the gov money and have again found themselves flailing.

Volkswagen and Mercedes chose fraud over innovation when it came to environmental regulations.

They aren't great companies suddenly facing a brand new opponent. They have been consistently dysfunctional.

At a certain point, the companies need to prove they care about surviving long term.

Given that the US and California have pumped tens of billions in taxpayer dollars into electrifying our auto fleet, more than China has given its EV makers, it is a shame that China out built the US on this modern infrastructure. GM and Ford are shit companies. There can be no other explanation for their failure despite the US's massive subsidies. Tesla is barely a player and they've got about $8 billion in government handouts while China's BYD is killing it on only about $3.5 billion in CCCP cash.

You're assuming that the batteries come from China, obviously, and that, say, RFKs tariffs would be, like, zero?

Because if you're counting on Trump to save you, I've got some possibly sobering news: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-us-china-tariffs...