I’m starting to worry that I’m poaching too much on William Teach’s themes, with two previous articles in a week about plug in electric vehicles, but I spotted the following story this morning in the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Ford CEO Jim Farley shares ‘shocking’ lesson he learned from Tesla

By Tony Owusu, TheStreet | Thursday, November 12, 2025 | 9:38 AM EST

Earlier this year, Ford CEO Jim Farley had a humbling experience in Asia.

The Detroit automaker has sunk billions into Model e, its electric vehicle division, for decades, with little to show for it.

In June, he told author Walter Isaacson during a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival that he made as many as seven trips to China over the past year.

“It’s the most humbling thing I have ever seen. Seventy percent of all EVs in the world, electric vehicles, are made in China,” Farley said. “They have far superior in-vehicle technology. Huawei and Xiaomi are in every car. You get in, you don’t have to pair your phone. Automatically, your whole digital life is mirrored in the car.”

Uhhh, maybe some of us would not see that as a great feature. A lot of people — I am not one of them — have their financial records on their phones, and pay some things with their too-smart phones. Perhaps some people wouldn’t want their cars to automatically “pair” with their phones, especially if it gives the car, and who knows how many other people, access to their lives and finances. With an estimated net worth of $72.9 million, perhaps Mr Farley is excited by every new gadget out there, and isn’t too terribly worried if someone pays for their Door Dash through Mr Farley’s accounts, but some of us poorer people do have to keep an eye on things.

The story continues to note how the CEO was impressed by superior technology and engineering, saying that Ford has to step up to compete, but then comes the money lines:

While Farley didn’t speak much about the builds of Ford’s Chinese rivals, he did praise the government for promoting the EV industry in a way the U.S. does not.

Farley said that “EVs are exploding in China” because the government there has put its “foot on the economic scale.”

In a Communist command economy, the government can put its “foot on the economic scale.” In a (mostly) free market in the United States, while there was some, thankfully expired, foot pushing in the form of government tax credits for buying electric vehicles and some states mandating that a certain percentage of new cars be EVs by 2030 to 2035, Americans exercising their free choices have not been so compliant. Toyota listened to what consumers wanted, and has focused on hybrids instead.

Perhaps it’s time that Mr Farley dumped his prejudices in favor of electric vehicles, and took a cold, hard look at what a free people taking free choices actually want.

This site noted, just five days ago, that Ford Motor Company was considering doing away with its all-electric F-150 Lightning line of trucks, because the buyer demand for the vehicles just wasn’t there. Now there’s this, from The Wall Street Journal:

Toyota Doubles Down on Hybrids in the U.S. With $14-Billion Battery Push

New North Carolina plant is aimed at selling more hybrid cars and trucks to Americans

By Christopher Otts | Wednesday, November 12, 2025 | 1:28 PM EST

LIBERTY, N.C.—Toyota, a longtime hybrid car and truck promoter, is making one of the industry’s biggest bets on green transportation and opening a $14 billion battery plant here.

For years, Toyota held out against electric vehicles while rivals retrofitted factories and launched models in preparation for an all-electric future. Now that the EV market in the U.S. is vanishing as tax credits expire and sales disappoint, Toyota is doubling down on its hybrid strategy.

The Japanese automaker’s gamble: that American consumers—many of whom won’t touch an EV—will buy increasing numbers of hybrids, which often get up to 50% better mileage than a standard gas-powered car.

Toyota also said it would invest up to $10 billion in U.S. manufacturing over the next five years in addition to the North Carolina site, where it made the largest investment in a U.S. battery-production site.

The batteries that Toyota has begun making at the sprawling plant, located between the cities of Greensboro and Raleigh, are going into hybrids assembled in Kentucky and Alabama. The complex is designed to make batteries for EVs and hybrids, including those that plug in and travel short distances on just electricity before switching to gas.

Our family are familiar with hybrids, as our older daughter had a 2017 Toyota Prius Hybrid, and now drives a 2024 Prius Hybrid. It’s a good, solid vehicle, and she put a ton of miles on her first hybrid, as her civilian job took her on frequent trips throughout the eastern half of the country. She put nearly 200,000 miles on it, before trading it in.

The reason she traded it in was, of course, the battery. It was beginning to fail, and Toyota wanted $8000 to change it. That has always been the problem with the hybrids, and it’s something Toyota, and other hybrid manufacturers, need to address. I’d bet 25€ that all Toyota did was spend less than $2000 to swap out the battery to sell it used.

“For the longest time, folks were criticizing Toyota that they were so slow to the game in the battery-electric business,” said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive. But the strategy worked, he said. “They really did focus on the traditional hybrids, and they are dominating that whole product segment.”

In other words, Toyota’s leadership were smart enough not to listen to Joe Biden and the Democrats, who were pushing a technology and infrastructure that was simply not ready.

Toyota did listen, however, to consumers, to new automobile buyers, and the company’s actions reflect the free market, and the choices people take in a free country.

It seems that the electric vehicle mandates of the Biden Administration were not greeted with approval by the public, and the public are not choosing to buy the silly things without Federal government bribery. From The Wall Street Journal:

Ford Considers Scrapping Electric Version of F-150 Truck

Once hyped as a ‘smartphone that can tow,’ production of the money-losing EV pickup may be shut down for good

2022 F-150 charging in a lot nicer garage than I have. It shows you just how much money you have to have to buy one of the fool things. Photo from a Ford sales site. Click to enlarge.

By Sharon Terlep | Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 4:06 PM EST

Ford Motor executives are in active discussions about scrapping the electric version of its F-150 pickup, according to people familiar with the matter, which would make the money-losing truck America’s first major EV casualty.

The Lightning, once described by Ford as a modern Model T for its importance to the company, fell far short of expectations as American truck buyers skipped the electric version of the top-selling truck. Ford has racked up $13 billion in EV losses since 2023.

Overall EV sales, already falling short of expectations, are expected to plummet in the absence of government support. And big, electric pickups and SUVs are the most vulnerable.

If you are blocked by the Journal’s paywall, you can read more about it in The Detroit News.

“The demand is just not there” for F-150 Lightning and other full-size trucks, said Adam Kraushaar, owner of Lester Glenn Auto Group in New Jersey. He sells Ford, GMC, Chevy and other brands. “We don’t order a lot of them because we don’t sell them.”

No final decision has yet been made, according to people familiar with the discussions, but such a move by Ford could be the beginning of the end for big EV trucks.

Using the back of my truck as a workbench. Would I ever do this with a $70,000+ truck?

The decision has been taken, taken already, but not by Ford executives; the decision was taken by the men who buy trucks!

I actually could do OK with an F-150 Lightning. I’m retired, and live and work on a small farm. My average mileage has greatly decreased since retirement, and I have a full shop, with 200 amp separate electric service, in which I could easily mount a vehicle charger. I ought to be the ideal customer, but I would never, ever buy that overpriced piece of [insert vulgar slang for feces here].

I already own an F-150, a 2010, which does just fine. It’s kind of beat up looking, because it’s actually a work truck, and it has some obvious rust thanks to Pennsylvania winters and road salt. Why would I throw away my money on a shiny, new truck at which I would be appalled to throw wood or brush or lumber in the back? The Lightning would be fine for people who haul nothing but groceries and beer, but for men who buy trucks because they use trucks for work, nope, sorry, wrong answer.

Ram truck-maker Stellantis earlier this year called off plans to make an electric version of its full-size pickup. General Motors executives have discussed discontinuing some electric trucks, according to people familiar with the matter. Sales of Tesla’s angular, stainless steel Cybertruck pickup tanked this year. And EV truck-maker Rivian has been cutting jobs to conserve cash.

Here’s the real kicker:

Ford already paused production of its F-150 Lightning—the bestselling electric pickup in the U.S.—last month amid an aluminum shortage. The company is weighing whether to keep that plant idle as it shifts to smaller, more affordable EVs, the people say. The company said it would restart production “at the right time.”

In October, the first month since the end of the federal EV tax credit, Ford’s overall EV sales in the U.S. fell 24% from a year earlier. Ford dealers sold 66,000 gas-powered F-Series pickups, up a tick from a year earlier, and just 1,500 Lightnings, the fewest of any model.

Translation: even the people who did buy them were influenced by the bribes offered by the federal government. Every American taxpayer was being charged a little bit to provide some welfare for the well-to-do, the only people who could afford to buy brand new F-150s.

We’ve seen this before. In April of 2010, when I bought my current vehicle, the Feds were offering the so-called “cash for clunkers” program. The 2000 F-150 I traded in, at, if I remember correctly, 189,000 miles, qualified for the first part, but the new F-150 didn’t for the second. Yeah, I was able to afford to buy a new vehicle, but the new vehicle I needed got less than necessary miles per gallon rating. Cash for clunkers was yet another bit of welfare for the well-to-do, a program which was supposed to aid in recession recovery, but in 2010, the only people who could afford to buy new vehicles didn’t need the government assistance.

So, without a government program bribing people to buy electric vehicles, and without the federal government mandate requiring a certain percentage of new vehicles sold to be EVs, the public are simply not buying EVs at a rate which can sustain production of them.

Remember one thing: the left are pro-choice on exactly one thing!