Journalist James Ochoa of The Street has said that Ford is sending “mixed signals” about its “commitment” to plug in electric vehicles, but he’s got that wrong. Reality is that car buyers have sent signals that the left do not like concerning the silly things!
The Dearborn-based automaker’s moves are a grim reflection of the EV market
James Ochoa | Sunday, July 21, 2024 | 5:09 PM EDT
Despite CEO Jim Farley’s enthusiasm about electric vehicles, navigating the avenues of the EV marketplace has been a rocky road at best for Ford (F).
In its earnings report released in April, the Blue Oval reported that its electric car division, Model e, lost $1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2024. Meanwhile, the automaker’s commercial and fleet vehicle division, Ford Pro, made $7,300 per vehicle on the nearly 400,000 vehicles it sold.
Meanwhile, the electric Model e division lost $130,000 on each of the nearly 10,000 EVs it moved in the same period.
Think about that: Ford was losing twice the cost of its most expensive electric vehicle, the F-150 lightning, on each unit sold.
During the company’s earnings call, Farley expressed that much work had to be done to make its EVs positively impact the company’s bottom line.
“We’re being very consistent about our discipline on profitability,” Farley said. “We expect every one of our EVs to make money in the first 12 months, and that is a very disciplined process.”
But here comes the kicker:
Part of Ford’s “disciplined process” is outsizing the need to build more profitable vehicles. Unfortunately for the environment, those vehicles aren’t electric vehicles but rather massive, fuel-burning, heavy-duty pickup trucks.
In a recent announcement, Blue Oval said it’s investing $3 billion to boost the output of the Super Duty, the bigger, bulkier sibling of the popular F-150 pickup trucks. These trucks, equipped with up to a 7.3-liter V8 engine, are popular with tradespeople and laymen who want extra power for towing larger objects like boats.
The article continues to tell readers about the investments the company is making to produce more of the Super Duty, which is a version of the F-250 or F-350, not the F-150 — because Ford is having trouble keeping up with the demand for the trucks. And here’s the money line:
While Ford’s Model e division loses $130,000 on each EV, Ford makes an estimated $20,000 in profit on every Super Duty.
Translation: in a market in which the federal government is providing tax credits and incentives to buy plug-in electric vehicles, Ford still cannot sell enough of them to come close to breaking even, while the company not only makes money on its larger trucks, but is just barely, if that, keeping up with the demand. While there are obviously some people who want EVs, the majority of the new vehicle buying market simply don’t want them.
But, of course, the federal government, and some state governments, want to force-feed the American people on things they do not really want. President Biden put in place a mandate that all new vehicles sold in the United States must be zero-emission by 2035, but his term ends in January. The expected Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Emhoff launched her own presidential campaign in 2019, and her stated positions were even more stringent than Mr Biden’s:
- A bold target to exceed the Paris Agreement climate goals and achieve a clean economy by 2045;
- Investing $10 trillion in public and private funding to meet the initial 10-year mobilization necessary to stave off the worst climate impacts;
- Modernize our transportation, energy, and water infrastructure;
- Accelerate the spread of electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines;
- Make big investments in battery storage, climate-smart agriculture, advanced manufacturing, and the innovative technologies that will build our carbon-free future;
- By 2030, we will run on 100 percent carbon-neutral electricity, all new buses, heavy-duty vehicles, and vehicle fleets will be zero-emission;
As we have previously reported, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Agency (SEPTA) bought 25 battery-electric buses from California manufacturer Proterra in 2016, but all have been parked since 2020 because they were pieces of feces had problems. In November of 2022, one of the mothballed Proterra buses spontaneously caught fire, which a SEPTA spokeswoman confirmed was traced to lithium ion battery units inside the bus.
- All new buildings will be carbon-neutral; and
- Transition our public lands from producing the fossil fuels that represent 24 percent of national emissions to carbon sinks.
In 2023, the United States was the world’s largest crude oil producer, as it had been for the previous five years, and has the world’s greatest proven recoverable oil reserves. In 2023, the US was by far the world’s largest natural gas producer, at 1,035,000,000,000 cubic feet, 76.4% more than #2 Russia’s 586.4 billion ft³, and over four times as much as third place Iran.
The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source.
Mrs Emhoff would curtail our oil and natural gas production where she could, raising prices for consumers, and sending more of Americans’ hard-earned dollars to foreign countries to buy oil and natural gas, and, of course, cut the number of jobs in oil and natural gas production in the US.
That is all pie-in-the-sky, and four years of economic reality ought to temper her proposals, but it tells us that Mrs Emhoff doesn’t care about what the American people actually want, as measured by our own economic choices. We vote every couple of years for political candidates, but we vote every single day of our lives with our economic choices. Those people buying gasoline-powered vehicles are voting against the Democrats’ plans to require zero-emission cars and trucks, at least for themselves. Those people buying or remodeling with natural gas furnaces and ranges are voting against the liberals’ stated policies.
The United States has been blessed with tremendous natural resources, including huge oil and natural gas resources. The US also has the world’s largest coal reserves, 250.3 billion tons, 56.1% more than second place Russia’s 160.3 billion tons. Mrs Emhoff and the Democrats would squander that great natural wealth by leaving it untapped, costing the American people wealth and jobs, and sending more of our remaining wealth overseas to buy things we currently produce ourselves.
The Guardian understands the Azeri hosts brokered a lengthy closed-door meeting with a small group of ministers and delegation heads, including China, the EU, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the UK, US and Australia, on key areas of dispute on climate finance and the transition away from fossil fuels. Continue reading
