Electric Vehicles have an opportunity to replace the Edsel as the historic reference for transportation marketing failure. The Edsel was “overhyped, unattractive (distinguished by a vertical grille said to resemble a horse collar[2]), and low quality.” It was also introduced during a crappy economy.
The EV is an overweight pack of lies whose “popularity” was compelled into being by progressive politicians and bureaucrats, and the Ford Motor Company has lost billions in 2022 equivalent dollars. A problem repeated in recent years as the government incentivized automakers to invest heavily in Electric Vehicles. Forced might be a better word. Between public statements about ending combustion-driven transportation and stricter fuel economy mandates, carmakers were not given much choice.
Car buyers, however, still have one.
Several years into the push to replace gas-powered engines with EVs has met an impenetrable wall named reality. EVs are not any of the things promised. Production has been scaled back as inventory piles up, dealers refuse to take more of it, and billions in losses are written off. Ford has taken a beating, and its latest mea culpa comes in production cuts for its EV truck line.
Ford planned to produce around 3,200 F-150 Lightnings per week in 2024 at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, which assembles all of the electric pickup trucks produced by Ford. Ford announced last month that it was cutting its production of the trucks in half, all the way down to 1,600 per week.
Ford has slashed $12 billion in EV investments as it struggles to sell its all-electric vehicles to consumers who have numerous concerns about transitioning from gas to electric, especially as retail prices for most EVs remain high.
Ford is shuffling employees to gas-powered production lines and hiring workers to build cars people want and can almost afford, as opposed to the impossible-to-afford EVs, which have only gotten more expensive. And the demand for rare earth metals has done little more than jack up costs and transfer wealth to China.
Given the Biden family’s cozy relationship with the CCP, you’d be right to wonder if this wasn’t just another way to make protection-money payments or extortion money, but it’s not just Biden. The left is obsessed with crushing the fossil fuel industry. Biden ran for office on it. The Dems are nearly all-in on the lie—the rich ones, at least. But you can only put so many lawn ornaments in your driveway (it’s not safe to park them in the garage), and the nation is running out of people who can afford impractical virtue-signal mobiles.
Without further interference from the government – and even it can’t backstop these turds with enough of someone else’s money to make them appealing – the industry is destined to collapse under the excessive weight of its own lithium battery limitations.
That won’t be the end of it. The apocalypse cult won’t let it go, but that’s not the biggest issue. Much like wind and solar waste, no one went in having end-of-life solutions for toxic components, and there is a lot of that out there – some of it aging in dealer lots.
No worries. I’m sure the EPA will make some rules to address another mess the government has made, and we’ll get to pay for that too.
