From Jack Davis at The Western Journal comes the news that a Ford’s plans to repurpose a massive, 487-acre property into a “hub” that produces electric vehicles has been nixed, and the car company will instead return to pumping out traditional internal combustion engines:
Ford had plans to build a lot of electric SUVs at a plant in Canada.
Instead, it decided to make pickup trucks that people want to buy.
As a result, the automaker is putting off plans for electric versions of its Ford Explorer and Lincoln Aviator and will churn out Super Duty pickup trucks at its Oakville, Ontario, plant….
Here’s more context, from a Canadian outlet:
Ford announced plans last year to spend $1.8 billion to transform the facility into a hub for electric vehicle manufacturing, including vehicle and battery pack assembly.
But after planning to start EV production at the plant in 2025, the company said in April it was pushing that back to 2027 to give the consumer market more time to develop and allow for further development of EV battery technology.
According to Reuters, the demand for these heavy-duty trucks “can’t” be met, and the company has no concrete plans to release new E.V.s until they can actually be a “profitable” part of the business:
‘Super Duty is a vital tool for businesses and people around the world and, even with our Kentucky Truck Plant and Ohio Assembly Plant running flat out, we can’t meet the demand,’ Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement.
…
Ford, which lost nearly $4.7 billion on its EV business in 2023 and has projected it will lose up to $5.5 billion this year, said in February the next generation of EVs would be launched ‘only when they can be profitable.’
Sure, Farley says that the company executives are “look[ing] forward” to a time when they can release an E.V. version of the Explorer and Aviator, but that time is nowhere in the foreseeable future:
Ford in April had already delayed the launch of the planned three-row electric SUVs at its Oakville Assembly facility from 2025 to 2027, citing slower than expected growth in EV demand. It said on Thursday it remained committed to those EVs and that timeline but did not say where they would now be built.
Now, the conversion to an E.V. facility was going to come with hundreds of layoffs, so this is certainly good news for the people who were about to lose their jobs—but you know what this means? We can expect even more subsidies, handed out by governments at the expense of the taxpayers and citizens. Bureaucrats and politicians keen on a “net zero” transition don’t have any regard or respect for a free market and its trends, so plan on them “investing” even more of our money to prop up the businesses willing to go along with the schemes, giving the latter the “profitability” they’re wanting. (Big government socialists/communists routinely use that word, “investment,” but it does not mean what they think it means—a good investment yields a positive return, a bad one a negative return.)
What’s more is that Ford isn’t the only company throwing it into reverse:
General Motors said it will make about 200,000 to 250,000 battery-powered vehicles this year, 50,000 below earlier estimates.
It all comes down to this observation, from Arun Kumar, an executive at consulting firm AlixPartners:
‘[T]he reality is … it’s a smart move to make sure you’re not losing market share in internal combustion[.]’
Correct, because that’s what the consumer wants—a reality only perplexing for some.
Image: Free image, Pixabay license.