Fresh off the stories of the demands at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the hoitiest and the toitiest get to use their private jets to take their mistresses to a very upscale Swiss ski resort and lecture us about global warming climate change, it seems that the people are just not doing what they’ve been told!

Ford cuts production of F-150 Lightning EV, adds jobs at Bronco and Ranger plant

• Ford is increasing production of its Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup, while cutting production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning, the automaker said Friday.
• The announced cut to Lightning production comes a month after CNBC and other media outlets reported Ford would slash planned production of the pickup roughly in half this year.
• The automaker will be reducing production of the Lightning at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan to one production shift from two, impacting approximately 1,400 employees.

by Michael Wayland | Friday, January 19, 2024 | 8:31 AM EST

DETROIT – Ford Motor is increasing production of its Bronco SUV and Ranger pickup, while cutting production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning, the automaker said Friday.

Ford said the production changes are intended to match production with customer demand. They mark the latest cuts or delays to production of EVs amid slower-than-expected customer demand.

“We are taking advantage of our manufacturing flexibility to offer customers choices while balancing our growth and profitability. Customers love the F-150 Lightning, America’s best-selling EV pickup,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a release. “We see a bright future for electric vehicles for specific consumers, especially with our upcoming digitally advanced EVs and access to Tesla’s charging network beginning this quarter.”

The announced cut to F-150 Lightning production comes a month after CNBC and other media outlets reported Ford would slash planned production of the pickup roughly in half this year, marking a major reversal after the automaker significantly increased plant capacity for the electric vehicle in 2023.

The automaker will be reducing production of the Lightning at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan to one production shift from two, impacting approximately 1,400 employees. The reduction takes effect April 1.

Ford declined to specify how the eliminated production shift will impact output of the vehicles.

The Bronco and Ranger models are gasoline-powered vehicles. Realistically, the current Ranger models are almost the size of my previous F-150, a model year 2000 extended cab. My current truck, a 2010 F-150, with 192,000+ miles on it, is significantly larger than my previous one, and if I decide to get a new truck, the Ranger, as long as it’s four-wheel drive, to get around in the dirt on the farm, would probably be sufficient.

President Biden and the climate activists must be aghast at this news, because it seems as though the plebeians are, shockingly enough, not buying enough plug-in electric vehicles to have kept that second production shift at Ford open. It does not matter what Jim Farley would like to see; Ford has to at least try to match its production to what consumers are willing to buy, and at least right now, that is not as many as the Patricians are pushing.

Clearly, the general public must hate Mother Gaia, or they’d be scooping up the electric vehicles as fast as they could be made. That, or perhaps, just perhaps, they are more concerned with putting food on the table tonight, and a roof over their heads this month, than they are about whatever the climate might be in 2050 or 2100. As we noted previously, “Even manufacturers who are enthusiastic about electric models are unsure whether consumers will buy enough of them to make up the majority of new car sales within a decade.”

Of course, our infrastructure is nowhere close to ready to support the number of EVs the government wants us to buy, and, as we reported on Boxing Day, investors have been fleeing commercial EV charging stations, because they are just not seeing the profitability in them.

Investors and corporate executives have to deal with actual economics, with profit and loss, not the political desires of government executives and bureaucrats, or the demands of political activists. When the people most involved in the economy tell us things, with their actions, we ought to listen.