Ford Will Keep Battery Factory Even If Republicans Ax Tax Break
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
What is supposed to happen? The US and vehicle makers doubles down on ICE cars while the rest of the world moves in the other direction?
Sounds like a good way to trash any competitiveness US car makers have....
[1] Texas Legislature Beats Back Assault on Clean Energy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44277367 - June 2025
(China installed 93GW of solar in May 2025, more than every other country combined in 2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44359105)
The left was idiotic to think dumping Peter's tax money to buy Paul's new e-car, then in other cases outright legally banning non-electric cars, was the way to achieve this. To me, it's as silly as if the government got the idea in its head that steam engine is the winner and starts incentivized steam engine cars, with a year 2030 all-steam-engine goal.
The way to overcome this so-called "entrenched interests" is clear as a bell, it's not some dramatic political struggle against forces old and evil. Electric cars are already in principle more powerful, simpler, and cheaper, than combustion engines, an amazing concept. Only issue is the battery. Government should have been, and should be, pumping money into developing a non-crappy battery, THEN when that's ready, there would be no need to incentivize people. The subsequent cars would be cheaper AND better. Let market forces decide, legislating what people ought to purchase is what is called a command and control economy and evidence shows that's bad
They are expensive, that's true, but the range is such a non-issue for anyone who can charge at home and drives a reasonable commute (i.e. doesn't need to stop to charge on their way home every day), and battery degradation is less than 2% per year.
> Let market forces decide, legislating what people ought to purchase is what is called a command and control economy and evidence shows that's bad
Equating regulation with communism is really tired rhetoric.
There are certainly some with power who are keen to "see the country slide in reverse towards a backward theocracy that would be easier to control", but by and large they're just riding an existing wave that's largely an emergent property of the system, while maybe making some nudges here and there to reduce the resistance to said wave.
Electric cars have been around since the late 1800s. If you mean modern ones, in the US the California Air Resources Board basically willed them back into existence in the 90s, and a California automaker (Tesla pre-Musk) made great strides in their public esteem by putting a battery pack and electric motor into a Lotus chassis and selling it as the "Roadster" (leaning on the prior art of companies like Ford and especially GM's EV1).
That's an argument from a rationality perspective. This is a decision from ideology. It's not about making the best choice, it's about making sure the right people lose.
Were IRA the victim of Big Oil's revanchism, we could at least understand.
This is just theft.
There's gotta be a joke about AI vibe coding there...
That the Biden Admin even got IRA passed was an amazing feat.
Automotive EE here…
As respectfully as I can; you have no idea what you are talking about and neither do the people cheering you on.
These vehicles are not ready for the markets they are (were) being pushed to.
Current electrics do not make sense in specifically hot or cold climates. They do not make sense for hard use. They do not make sense for long trips. They do not make sense for repair.
They make sense in California for people that will keep them only a couple of years until the next status symbol is available.
I own an electric, I work on some. I like the pluses, and am keenly aware of the negatives. I see people storing them outside in snow and it makes me sad for their owners that think they bought an alternative to an ICE vehicle.
EVs today are not alternatives to ICE vehicles, the are compliments.
Fun fact… right now with the systems today, most EVs that will need a new battery, will be totaled by that cost. I have the tools, I’ve been inside the 600V packs that can easily kill you. Mechanics aren’t trained, prepared for, or will accept the risk. These are not 20 year vehicles. They’re basically 8 year vehicles currently.
Disagree with your feelings all you like, I live it.
I have an EV in Minnesota and it's great. Battery life does take a pretty big hit in winter but that's fine based on how I use it. The real problem is lack of charging infrastructure, not the range.
>I have an EV in Minnesota and it's great.
Today. I’m sure it is. That “big hit” you take in the winter, will only ever get worse. Eh, but maybe I’m wrong! Maybe I should change jobs.
Some days I repeat your ideas in my head and think the EV would be great. Other days, I consider the places I see ICE vehicles needing work—- suspension pieces, air conditioning, electronic bits, lights, etc and I think otherwise.
Really, I haven’t had a problem with an ICE engine or transmission in a long time. ( Including my 20 year old crv, which just keeps running. The suspension is getting creaky, though. )
I wish there was more information available about early Teslas and how they’re doing today. I just don’t have a good feel for longevity.
Another reason is that if you design for the strengths of pure EVs, you can shift all of that weight lower and out of cabin and storage space, including offering new perks such as "frunks" ("front trunks").
A hybrid can't compete on cabin/storage space with a pure EV designed to be a pure EV, and can't quite compete on battery range.
With better charging infrastructure, that most turns into virtually all.
All the MFGs know electric will be the future.
But, I’m working on truck stuffs for 2034, and guess what? ICE.
The major EV makers provide an 8 year warranty on their batteries. If EV batteries only lasted 8 years on average, it means they'd be replacing half of them under warranty, which would cost them a fortune and show up on their balance sheet. Tesla & Hyundai aren't bankrupt; batteries last significantly longer than 8 years.
I’m sure some mfg was selling 10 year warranties on this gen 1.5 of EVs, and they will take a hit. Believe it or not though, the MBAs that pushed to market to bad fit consumers, yea, they know what they’re doing.
By 2030 EV's will cost less than an ICE powered vehicle up front, travel further on a single charge than an ICE with a full tank, cost less to maintain, take about the same amount of time to "refuel" (if you need to do that at all because you can recharge for free at a solar powered home) ... and won't be built in the USA if Ford doesn't do something like this. It probably won't be in the USA even with Ford's efforts.
If you are an automotive EE and live and work in the USA, you've got very little time left to get your finger out. Even if you do and are insanely clever, you've got 3.5 more years of Trump and the GOP playing to the denial crowd, putting up barriers like this to any attempt to change from the status quo. You're also up against a highly industrialised country with four times the number of EE's the USA, some of which are also insanely clever, all being forced to innovate in a highly competitive market fueled by government subsidies.
Personally, if I were you, I'd be assuming the car manufacturing industry in the USA is fucked, and looking for another industry to transition my EE skills into.
They will be good. They aren’t now. The entire market is cooling before it turns in to backlash.
>I'd be assuming the car manufacturing industry in the USA is fucked
Ha, well, I guess the most comforting thing I can tell you is that it’s OK you don’t know anything about how cars are actually made. It took Tesla a decade of building them and they still haven’t entire figured it out. No, automotive industry isn’t going anywhere. It’s got its own ups and downs and quirks, but overall we’ll be selling cars in 2050 no question.
20% at 10 years.
Back to the other topic, having owned a PHEV for more than a decade now, it's such an obvious compromise that doesn't make a lot of sense long term. It made great sense when I bought the car more than a decade ago, but today the weight carrying around a gas engine and gas tank would be so much better put to use on extra battery range rather than a gas engine you need a lot less often than you think you do. The only person I'd recommend a PHEV to is whoever I sell my current car to when there's a full BEV I want to buy. But I've also had years where I've gotten the "use it before stale" warnings where my only use of gas that year was because I had no other use for gas and my car suggests keeping the age of gas below a year old, and I recognize there are still a lot of anecdotal use cases of extreme daily/weekly/monthly mileage in the US that I cannot speak to.
EVs will disrupt that "high volume" part of it. How long will the "clubs" keep the expensive equipment maintained and running as volume shifts? What price point is too low margin? What price point is too high that volume further drops? (How likely is that to spiral?)
It's not entirely just theoretical, the 1970s showed things happen to gas stations quickly when prices change. We've already seen the death of the "non-club" gas station accelerate in the last three decades, even as the "clubs" build more than ever, further out from city cores, further out into the suburbs and the exurbs. The urban gas station is disappearing/has been disappearing for decades. Gas stations are no longer a foundational part of the urban experience, they are moving out to the edges.
As demand changes from EVs, I expect things to get weird and possibly quickly, because the economics model of gas has always been weird but has been put up with because it is high volume enough. When the high volume is disrupted, what do you expect happens?
I mean, I suppose it's possible there's some level of regulatory hurdle I'm not aware of, but it would seem to be a fairly obvious combination. Hell, AIUI most EV chargers still take longer than a gas pump does to "fill up" a car, so that would make it even more likely for the driver (and passengers if present) to hang about in the convenience store for longer and buy some of the stuff that actually makes the place money.
Maybe it'll go the other way: restaurants and theaters and the like will put in charging stations that you can hook up to while you're there as a paying customer.
Consider that if Asia and Europe manage to replace a majority of ICE vehicles in a decade or two with EVs, oil production will necessarily decrease in the end. We'll have a glut of cheap oil for a while as other countries buy less, which will artificially prop up ICE vehicles until production slows and costs go up. When gasoline inevitably becomes prohibitively expensive (assuming EVs are indeed the future), the US could be left with pricey fuel and no real ability to dig itself out of the hole it's created. It's not just the battery factories, it's the knowledge, talent, supply chains, trade deals, infrastructure, sales pipelines, patents, etc.
The "long term gain" turns out to just be us killing off our entire auto industry slowly. The "free market" in this case is actually "the free market here in our bubble". Globalization isn't going to sell cheap Chinese EVs in Montana, and people buying an $8000 BYD aren't going to look at a Chevy Malibu. If/when that market eventually collapses because we got left behind by the rest of the world, we'll be regretful that we didn't put subsidies into batteries and the grid. After all, we did subsidize oil and the auto industry for decades and decades for this reason. How many politicians stumped on the promise of keeping Detroit going?