Ford has done a complete reversal on its plans for an electric sport-utility vehicle plant in Canada so it can focus on what consumers actually want: more combustion engine heavy-duty pickup trucks.
In a Thursday announcement, Ford said it would invest about $3 billion to expand Super Duty production on one of the company’s most profitable and in-demand vehicles, including $2.3 billion for retooling a plant in Ontario originally intended to be the EV manufacturing hub, with the rest going toward facilities in the U.S. and Canada.
“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 press release. “This move benefits our customers and supercharges our Ford Pro commercial business.”
For much of the last five years, automakers have been spending billions of dollars in a frantic race to develop electric vehicles and build factories to produce them, with expectations that consumers would flock to these new models.
But in the past 12 months, the growth rate of electric vehicle sales has slowed sharply as some car buyers have balked at the high prices of electric cars and trucks and the hassles of charging them, especially on long trips.
The shift in consumer sentiment is now forcing many automakers to pull back on aggressive investment plans, and pivot, at least partly, back to the internal-combustion engine vehicles that still account for most new car sales and a large share of corporate profits. (NYT)
Thursday's announcement from Ford marks the latest example of that, which came a day after GM said it would make roughly 50,000 fewer EVs than it previously planned.
As Axios notes, it's not hard to figure out why given that Ford's EV unit lost $4.7 billion last year while the Ford Pro commercial business raked in $7.2 billion.
"Like General Motors and other rivals, Ford has been backing off EV commitments as it becomes clear that the early adopter era is over," the outlet said.