I should have known something was up when Ford scheduled an embargo at 4:05 PM yesterday. It was a one-two punch of news, with the exciting part for us being the introduction of an EREV F-150. The other fist of news, while somewhat predictable, was maybe even more important and timed to be released after the market closed. Ford is changing its big EV plans and paying the price for it this year.
The big picture of it all is interesting to me, so it’ll lead The Morning Dump today. I think Ford is getting off easy, especially when you look at other trends. The earliest report of November EV sales shows a huge 40% drop. In Europe, Volkswagen is closing a plant for the first time in 88 years. Can you guess what it makes?
And, finally, GM has done ok in the EV space, but there’s one big drawback to buying most GM EVs. Will the company’s latest move fix this problem?
Ford Didn’t Get Off Easy, But It Could Have Been Worse
When Ford announced last year that it was creating a Skunkworks team to develop a sub-$30k EV separate from all the other electric vehicles it was developing, it was clear that the company was having serious second thoughts about whether or not it could make big electric cars work.
It’s long been my view, and David’s view, and Lucid founder Peter Rawlinson’s view that the battery technology is just not there to make big EVs work as well as EREVs can. With the exception of the Mustang GTD, Ford is a mainstream brand that makes the biggest chunk of its money from selling trucks to people who do work or, at least, people who like to imagine doing work. It does this at a massive scale, moving somewhere around three-quarters of a million F-Series trucks a year.
It’s no surprise then that Ford’s view was that it could build a lot of big electric vehicles for that kind of customer. A big three-row SUV, a couple of trucks, and an electric van. All extremely Ford products.
With the announcement that it was discontinuing the all-EV F-150 Lightning and making it an EREV instead, Ford also mentioned it was giving up its big EV dream and focusing on other things.
“This is a customer-driven shift to create a stronger, more resilient and more profitable Ford,” said Ford president and CEO Jim Farley. “The operating reality has changed, and we are redeploying capital into higher-return growth opportunities: Ford Pro, our market-leading trucks and vans, hybrids and high-margin opportunities like our new battery energy storage business.”
These actions provide a path to profitability in Model e by 2029, targeting annual improvements beginning in 2026. The actions will also improve profits in Ford Blue and Ford Pro over time with early signs of benefits in 2026. As a result, Ford expects to record about $19.5 billion in special items, the majority in the fourth quarter of 2025, with the remainder in 2026 and 2027.
As part of these special items, the company expects approximately $5.5 billion in cash effects, with the majority paid in 2026 and the remainder in 2027. To support these actions, Ford and its subsidiaries plan to hire thousands of people across America, reinforcing the company’s leadership as the top employer of U.S. hourly autoworkers.
That $19.5 billion is Ford cancelling most of its big EV plans, including the three-row (widely expected) and the electric van (also, not a surprise). Ford says it’ll keep the affordable, probably Maverick-sized EV truck it teased earlier this year, built on the company’s Universal EV Platform.
The key words in all of this are “choice” and “affordability.” Looking at the relative success of an automaker like Hyundai, Ford thinks it’ll bring a bunch of different pieces together for different consumers, and expects that by the end of the decade, about half of its cars globally will be electrified in some manner.
While nearly $20 billion is a huge amount, I think the muted market reaction so far today is a sign that this was sort of priced in, and that the potential for profits from hybrids and trucks means Ford is better off not wasting the money.
EV Sales Down 41% In November, But Rivian Does Better
The latest EV Market Monitor from Cox Automotive shows that EV sales dropped 41.2% year-over-year and 5.2% compared to October. This was no surprise and reflects two different, but connected political realities. Last November, more people bought EVs because the election of President Trump made them fear they’d lose out on an EV tax credit. Then, in September of this year, that tax credit went away.
While most brands struggled, it wasn’t universal as Cox points out:
Despite November’s weakness, year-to-date EV sales remain 2.1% above last year’s pace. EV share of total sales fell to 5.4% in November, the lowest since April 2022 and down from October’s 5.8%. By volume, the market leaders were Tesla (39,800), Rivian (4,500), Ford (4,188), Chevrolet (3,112), and Hyundai (2,853). Tesla dropped 2.1% month over month but gained 2.2 percentage points of market share to reach 56.7%, as competitors faced even steeper declines. Several brands posted year-over-year sales volume gains, with Rivian leading at 7.6% and showing the strongest momentum. Rivian’s sales volume was up 14.1% from October.
Wow, good on Rivian.
VW Closes First Plant In Germany In 88 Years
If you want to have a bookend for modern Volkswagen, I don’t think you can do better than the Dresden Glass Factory. It was built to produce the VW Phaeton, which, while a car I love, was a good example of the insanity of peak-Piech era thinking. It’ll be the first plant to close in VW’s post-WWII history, and the last vehicle to roll off the assembly in is an ID.3 EV created in the company’s whiplash response to Dieselgate.
The plant will be taken over by a VW-led partnership:
From DFP via MSN:
From January 2026, Volkswagen, Saxony and the Technical University (TU) of Dresden are entering into a strategic partnership and will put the Transparent Factory to new uses.
The plan is to create an innovation centre for key technology fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, microelectronics and chip design.
The TU intends to use almost half of the space in the factory in future. The 230 employees are to keep their jobs in Dresden for the time being.
“For the time being” is how long, exactly? Asking for a friend.
GM Will Get Apple Music
General Motors makes a nice EV, and is one of the few companies that is well-positioned to keep making a wide range of EVs into the future. The company also doesn’t put Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in most of these cars, and plans to remove the software from future vehicles. This sucks!
The company is starting to make some improvements, though, by at least offering Apple Music and podcast apps (hopefully, Apple Podcasts) to its vehicles. Here’s what the company said in a press release:
To make listening effortless, GM is making audio streaming standard through OnStar Basics for all 2025 and newer vehicles in the U.S. and Canada. That means customers can access their favorite music, audiobook, podcast, and news apps — including Apple Music — at no additional connectivity cost for eight years with their vehicle purchase.
“We are bringing the Apple Music app to GM vehicles in a way that takes full advantage of our industry-leading audio capabilities,” said Tim Twerdahl, GM’s vice president of global product management. “It’s the latest example of how we’re expanding entertainment choices built directly into our vehicles.”
This does sound like, after eight years, you’ll have to pay to use basic apps.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
This is Phil Cordell’s “Red Lady,” a song that gives a Decemberists vibe approximately 40 years earlier. I’m also shocked this hasn’t been in a Wes Anderson movie yet.
The Big Question
What’s your favorite car-that-never-got-built?
Credit: Ford; DepositPhotos.com
What’s your favorite car-that-never-got-built?
2002 Lincoln Continental Concept.
Big mistake.
Huge.
Well technically they built one fully functional example that Dan Gurney thrashed around a racetrack, but seeing this thing as a kid blew my mind about what a Mustang was. The original Mustang I concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mustang_I
Hot take: If you’re going to dick around with music or podcasts or whatever while driving (which in a perfect world nobody would, but everybody does because we actually live in the worst timeline), just pick up your phone. The screen mirroring systems aren’t a better interface than the phone one and they’re not less distracting. I say this both as someone who hates trying to queue up music on Android Auto and as someone who has watched other people take their eyes of the road for extended periods of time trying to get AA to do what they want. I don’t get the love for AA, with the exception of Maps integration, which I wouldn’t even care about as much if the built-in GM Maps app would work properly when tethered to my cell phone (GM uses Google Maps too, so YMMV with other manufacturers).
No, it’s not legal, but when was the last time you heard of anyone getting pulled over for cell phone use? Heck, I’d happily pay a cell phone ticket because it would mean they’re actually enforcing those laws, finally.
I carry an old Android with most of by CD collection ripped onto it. Just plug it in and scroll on a long trip. I tend to play full albums anyway so very little actual distraction. Get off my lawn!!!
My NAV is windshield mounted iPhone.
I do as well, but on multi-hour trips I like to queue up multiple albums and I literally cannot do that on AA because there’s no way (at least that I’ve found) to queue things through the hyper-simplified screen interface. I’m sure it doesn’t help that hurtling down the interstate at 70 MPH is exactly the wrong time to be trying to figure out a different interface.
A. I agree on the mirrored screen being worse than the phone. Phone pairing / mirror should be just that – a mirror of the original screen not a redesigned and stripped down interface that limits the functionality and makes it more difficult to navigate.
B. I personally know 2 people that have received tickets for using phones while driving here in Oregon.
So don’t use the interface.
With Apple Car play, you push a button to tell Siri to play what you want. In my Odyssey(and most cars I believe), it’s a long press of the voice control button on the steering wheel.
Voice controls might be the only music interface I dislike more than Android Auto. 😛
Then you’re using it wrong.
It works great for “Play the Album ABC by DEF.”
And when that album is done, you do the same for the next album you wanted from your queue.
Where I live the cops actively enforce the cell phone while driving laws. Maybe because it’s pretty easy to hide in a bush during bumper to bumper traffic and nab people. It’s also an $800 ticket. Not worth the frustration of a little extra fumbling with Carplay before I drive home.
Boy howdy, they sure seem set on making sure that factory is never profitable. From EVs no one wants to buy, to a technology no one wants.
Visited a demo center “showcasing” this exact tech just last week. Nothing really anything new under the sun, a lot I had seen countless times before. The integration was impressive however and some of the machine learning was eye opening. The rest was flash but no real substance.
TBF the ID3, built there, is probably the only EV they have that lots of people seem to want. If they brought it to NA, I’d even consider it.
VW should have built the MicroBus concept in 2001 or whenever they first teased it. It would have been hot shit then…. Now it’s just an overpriced joke. Those elder boomers and young silent generation folks who would have snapped them up are now well into their downsizing era.
Re Ford:
Big truck & luxury EVs as first gen was always dumb. Sure, expensive products pro are an obvious place to try and recoup R&D expense, but that doesn’t work if they don’t sell in volume. Hybrids are an adequate holdover until the next wave of battery technology hits the mainstream. Focusing on smaller EVs until then makes a ton of sense.
If it’s anything like power tools, electrification comes for the small, low demand devices and works its way up. We started with drills, now electric chainsaws are the pragmatic choice for most consumers.
Once consumers start to experience electrified products, they don’t want to go back. I only had to drive a model 3 once to realize I’ll be owning an EV as soon as it is practical to do so.
Everyone laughed at Toyota when they didn’t go all in on EV.
Who’s laughing now?
“What’s your favorite car-that-never-got-built?”
Cadillac Sixteen
This!!!
“What’s your favorite car-that-never-got-built?”
Can I include the MR2 rally car that never got built? Toyota 222D
https://petrolicious.com/blogs/articles/the-mr2-based-toyota-222d-was-the-group-s-weapon-that-never-was
TBQ: 2000 Chevy K5 Blazer
GM does such a crap job of convincing everyone that ditching Android Auto and Carplay is good for consumers. Unless they can convince everyone that this actually benefits the consumer, they are going to lose a lot of sales over this. It’s pretty clear that they are only doing this so they can get the user data that Google or Apple is getting. The big loss is that I know AA and Carplay will get updates and allow updates and additions to apps that work with it, but history tells me that the vehicle infotainment will not, especially after a few years.
I hoped it would be like 3 years ago when they forced everyone to buy Onstar and a connected services premium plan for all GMC and Buick models for 3 years as part of your purchase price (non optional $40 a month plan) and then that silently went away after customers revolted. I ended up with one of those cars on lease, and I’ve used hotspot data and Onstar exactly 0 times in 3 years, yet I paid for it.
Anyway, I’ve said before and I’ll say again… GM, if your systems are really better, put it in along with AA and Carplay and let the consumer decide which system they want to use. Most will pick the better option if your integration is better, but you won’t lose the sales.
I like CarPlay and it’s on my dashboard most of the time when I’m driving, but it’s starting to show it’s age when compared to some newer infotainment systems. I find MBUX navigation far superior to Apple Maps, for example.
That’s the core of my problem with GM’s decision – having owned a 2017 GM vehicle, I have zero faith that they can do infotainment better than Apple. But if Apple isn’t careful, they’re going to start losing ground quickly – manufacturers don’t seem interested in CarPlay Ultra, but Android Automotive is getting near impossible to avoid.
Second Generation Pontiac Fiero
https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g42954108/design-rejects-second-gen-pontiac-fiero-gallery/
It would’ve been super cool if VAG actually built the Lamborghini Estoque
IMHO,when the administration changes you will see a switch back towards renewable energy.
Even progressive states like MA are starting to think about how realistic some of the climate goals are. Either way, you are right, they will switch but I think they will have to land in a more realistic place to get full political buy in from either side.
My favorite car that was never made was the GM Hy-Wire. I remember reading about it as a kid and losing my mind. It made a ton of sense. Obviously now, hydrogen is a non-starter. But an EV or eREV version would be pretty incredible. The concept car still looks very modern. And the skateboard chassis design has obviously gone well. But it just feels like no one properly takes advantage of it. They all just make big crossovers with it.
If you’re interested, there’s a Top Gear segment in which James May drives it way back in 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fBqkWkEeqU
The concept cars burned into my soul as a kid were the Ford GT90, and the Audi Avus Quattro. I would lie in bed yearning to ride in a GT90. As I got older, I quite liked the alpha wolf truck vaporware, and some Mazda concepts (the iconic sp, especially), but my current favorites only exist in my dreams: a Mazda cx50 based truck, a revived electric Citroen XM, and an alternate present where the i3 and i8 design philosophy permeated the rest of BMW, and lead to quirky futuristic station wagons and roadsters.
I almost flagged the GT90 too. It would have been perfect for Ford’s anything goes 1990s.
This is dumb of Ford, but it’s not just them. Most corporations and the entirety of American corporations operate on impulse. All that matters is the next earning call and line going up. The result is they’re all in a constant state of being reactionary rather than preventative. As a result it’s really unsurprising to me that we’re not seeing Toyota or Hyundai/Kia suddenly having to rapidly change course and lose billions of dollars to make line go up.
Anyway, a major study recently concluded that 70% of the 10 largest interstates in the US are within TEN MINUTES of a charging station. This is up from about 50% in 2020. Add in the numbers we’re now routinely seeing in second generation EVs (300+ miles of range in particular) and it’s abundantly clear that range anxiety is made up bullshit that people who dislike BEVs for other reasons lean on as a crutch.
The rest of the first world (if you can even call us that in 2025…) knows this and EV adoption is steadily going up pretty much everywhere else. Abandoning it for HURRRRR DURRRRRR MOAR GAS GUZZLING TRUCKS SUCK IT LIBS!!!! might earn you some reactionary buyers, put you in the good graces of the current, widely hated administration, and give C suite assholes that sweet sweet hit of line going up, but it’s going to make you irrelevant in international markets within a few years.
Like, less than 5. That’s how fast the technology is improving. To clarify, I don’t just want ICE outright banned, I acknowledge that there are still niche situations that BEVs are objectively inferior for, and I’m all for hybridizing many of the things as a stopgap even if it should’ve been done a decade ago or more.
But “we’re ditching EVs to sell as many gas chugging $70,000 trucks on 10 year loans as possible” is a strategy that is going to crash and burn catastrophically, and when these assholes are in front of congress with their tails between their legs in a few years going “UwU pls bail us out big daddy capitalism” we’d better not do it this time. The truck industrial complex is a ticking time bomb and EVs are both the present and future despite whatever ridiculous mental backflips you’re doing to convince yourself otherwise.
Hallelujah, holy shit. Where’s the Tylenol?
Edit: here’s the article I got the data from https://fortune.com/2025/11/01/ev-fast-charging-stations-range-anxiety-electric-vehicles/
Did anyone actually make a profit selling BEV this year? How much government money was spent to achieve this?
How much government money is spent subsidizing the oil and gas industry? And how much government money is about to spent invading Venezuela to take their oil and create a sideshow for the administration’s incompetence? We could do this all day
About $4 Billion per year that could be reversed through congressional action was spent on the oil and gas industry. So around 20% of the amount that just Ford lost on EVs.
I think GM and Tesla are the only ones that actually turn a profit on their EVs. Actually, Kia/Hyundai may as well. I dunno what their costs are. But they’re selling.
GM sold nearly 145k EVs through the first 3 quarters of 2025. Assuming $7500 for each, this is $1B in consumer incentives. GM also got direct incentives as well.
A recent Chinese study on Chinese EV subsidies found a cost of $830 per ton of CO2 avoided. Not really cost effective. How long do subsidies have to stay until companies can be profitable without them? Undetermined.
Ford is the only big 3 that didn’t take govt money for a bail out last time that happened in the market, so it seems disingenuous to say they will do so following their EV decisions.
They are cancelling their BIG EV plans. Not as in their “big plans” but as in their plans for large physical volume vehicles. A van, a 3 row SUV, and their existing truck. The article makes no mention that they are planning to cancel the Mach E, their skunkworks vehicle, or their “universal EV” platform at all. I don’t see how this is “ditching EVs”.
Full size trucks are an almost universally US product, with some tail end in Canada and Mexico. So, yeah, as a US company, making a big product for the US buyer, it kind of makes sense to stop losing money on the Lighting (which has kinda stopped selling) and try to revise it in to something more market viable as an EREV.
Everyone wanting huge trucks is currently dependent on gas being cheap and people who make $50,000 a year being able to secure 72+ month loans on $70,000 BOF vehicles they don’t need. I am not an economist but I have a pretty good hunch that that’s not going to lost forever…Hell it may not even last the next 6 months.
The big issue is it’s not profitable to drill for oil or frac.when gas and oil prices are low so the current prices for gas are unsustainable.
So the thing about this is that apparently AI is really good at drilling for oil and gas, especially at deciding where the lateral pipes go. There is much less need to drill new wells when expected recovery at already drilled wells doubles.
I agree. But I’ve also thought that for years and here we are. I keep telling myself there couldn’t be THAT many people able to spend that much on a car, again and again. They keep seemingly proving me wrong.
But I also think that exact argument is why it makes perfect sense for Ford to stop focusing on what would be $70K full size EVs. No one wants those now, even when the money is available. They would be even less sellable if the money stops.
Quite uppity of you to tell others what they do and don’t need, isn’t it?
And, no, “everyone wanting huge trucks” is not nearly as dependent on the economy as you think it is. For all the hand wringing about gas prices, they are at best an inconvenience for most Americans when they are higher. Someone who can afford a new vehicle can also afford high gas prices. They may be annoyed by them, but they have the disposable income to afford them. This is why demand for “huge trucks” continues despite multiple economic downturns over the past 30 years since SUVs and crossovers became popular.
In this case it is also extremely important to recognize Ford owns more than half of the Heavy-Duty commercial Truck market. They also sell a ton of things other than truck-based vehicles. Yes, They sell 1.1 million trucks a year, but they also sell 875,000 SUV and 44k mustangs. Them canceling a very expensive for the consumer 3 row BEV, likely to sell slowly to instead focus on that capital on improving the existing volume sellers makes sense. They’re not giving up on the EV either with the new small platform still coming.
“In this case it is also extremely important to recognize Ford owns more than half of the Heavy-Duty commercial Truck market.”
Not even close. Ford is the largest player in the medium duty market (Class 3 to 6) but the F-750 is a tiny player in the heavy duty market (Class 7 and 8) Ford sold their heavy duty truck business to Daimler back in the 90’s and only recently got back into the market.
Daimler is by far the largest HD truck manufacturer with 40%
Paccar is about 25%
Volvo is about 17%%
International is about 15%
Ford and Hino are rounding errors.
This guy heavy-duty’s. (I suspect Sackofcheese was using ‘heavy duty’ in the generic sense, and was thinking of the F450-650 models. But to industry insiders like myself and I suspect you, ‘heavy duty’ means class 7-8, but in our heart-of-hearts, we only really include class 8… class 7 is just a jumped-up medium duty poser. 80,000+ lb. GCWR or GTFO!)
So true. Is pretty crazy that we have 7 classes up to 33,000 lbs and then 33,001 and up is just Class 8. That covers a huge range of trucks.
Except Ford execs were in favor of the bailouts. It wasn’t because of warm fuzzies for GM or Chrysler. Their shared suppliers were going under if the other Detroit automakers weren’t bailed out. So it was in Ford’s interest to have their competition stay afloat. Otherwise Ford’s (and other automakers) American and probably Canadian operations would have gone under when their suppliers couldn’t supply parts.
False. Ford is the only one of the Detroit 3 that didn’t go bankrupt. Part of that was them being lucky and having just borrowed the max amount they could to fund a turn around plan just before the credit markets froze up. The other was more than $10 billions in loans from the feds to keep the doors open and the assembly lines running.
Without government intervention they would have been bankrupt as well.
Haha.
No matter how much you want much of what you said above to be true, it’s just objectively not.
Most people do not agree with you.
They do not agree that charging at home or on the road is more convenient than filling up at the pump, they do not agree that “less maintenance” is worth more up front cost and more daily inconvenience, and they do not agree with your assertion that the situation is going to be somehow wildly different in five years.
It’s fan-freaking-tasic that there is some charging available within 10 minutes of most major highways. You know what is available within 1 minute of almost every exit? A gas station. You know what is almost guaranteed to be unoccupied, work the first time, and get the driver back on the road in under five minutes if they wish? The gas pump. You know what has none of those advantages? Your charger, which is somewhere further away than said gas pump, not guaranteed to be available, and not guaranteed to work.
There are no fundamentals about what I have written above that will change significantly over the next several years UNLESS charging time and accessibility plus ease of use and cost can be brought to equivalence with ICE cars. That will not happen in five years. Even if cost parity can be achieved…that’s only cost PARITY. Trying to sell a vehicle with a different (not better, just different) set of trade offs to consumers requires cost incentive that just won’t be there.
THE MARKET HAS SPOKEN.
The market with a big old boost from 100 years of policy choices. But as soon as any of those choices start to shift in a different direction, well…
I don’t quite agree that the market has spoken. I really do think the market is having an ongoing conversation. I don’t really believe we are going to have some kind of 90%+ BEV penetration in the market in the next 15 years . It would only be possible through government intervention.
Until Cost and time parity exists, and then we watch what the market does, I don’t think we can conclude the market has spoken. If cost and time parity is achieved, and Gas continues to be dominant, then I will agree the market has spoken.
I think it has spoken with regard to BEV trucks.
The correct, and astoundingly obvious solution, was always hybrids with range extenders or whatever acronym is currently in vogue to describe that sort of set up.
It increases consumer familiarity with electric drivetrains in general, it allows consumers to see the in town advantages of electric vehicles, and it prevents range anxiety from being an issue.
Hell, even putting a REAL hybrid system, like the Prius, in truck/SUV size would make wild gains in city fuel economy.
Imagine, an HEV truck that can top 30mpg in the city. A lot of them are already achieving mid 20s on the highway.
Ford already did that with the F-150 HEV. It does 23 mpg in the city which is better than Toyota manages with the Tundra hybrid (20 mpg)
(Chevy managed 21 mpg city with their 2010 hybrid Silverado)
A 30 mpg full size truck is still a bit of a dream considering the Highlander Hybrid does 27 mpg city unless you go with the weak 2.5L version that manages 34 but can only tow 3,500 lbs
It’s where everyone in the industry thought we were going until the stock market went insane for Tesla and every auto executive got twin raging hard ons for TSLA’s P/E ratio and the bread lines to which they thought they would be able to send every powertrain engineer and technician they currently employ.
There’s a reason why every new EV is now able to access the Supercharger network. It’s there and it works. It’s also the reason Tesla is still popular. Drive up, plug in and it starts charging. Fast. In my experience it’s done charging for the next trip segment by the time I’m back from the bathroom. Unless I’m towing my camper, which takes longer.
Having owned an EV crossover for a year and a half, there’s no way I’d go back to an ICE crossover. It just works. And L2 charging at home, which I’m lucky enough to do, is incredibly convenient. Turn, grab charger, turn back, open charge door, plug in. Takes maybe ten seconds and it’s charged by when I need to use it. So much better than standing pumping gas.
Completely agree with you regarding the Tesla model.
For the life of me, I do not understand why the other EV charging companies cannot understand that immediate access and flawless uptime are crucial to adoption. Maybe it’s a harder problem to solve than I think it is, but it seems that there are very rarely problems with Supercharges and almost always. problems with every other charger on essentially EVERY youtube video I watch regarding roadtripping EVs.
Now, I fundamentally disagree with you that charging at home is more convenient than filling up a gas tank. I think this is something that people who like charging at home just assume to be true about every other consumer, when it is in fact, not true.
I don’t mind standing there pumping gas for five minutes once a week or every two weeks. It absolutely is more convenient for me to do that than to have to remember to plug my car in on a more frequent basis when I return home.
Additionally…and I think this is a bigger factor than most realize…many people have *stuff* in their hands when they come home. Stuff they need to take inside, stuff they need to get out of the car…just *stuff*. I don’t want to have to get out of the car with my stuff, put it all down, plug the car in, and then pick it all back up. I don’t want to go inside with my stuff, and put it down, and then come back out the the car. It’s inconvenient, and consumers don’t like inconvenience.
I truly believe that for many people, having to think about or plug the car in is more of a daily inconvenience than just stopping for gas every once in a while.
Just as a thought experiment, would you or do you think most people would trade their cell phone for a device that could go a week or two without dying, but instead of charging at home they would have to take it to a gas station or some other similar location. I’m not sure if people really find it more convenient or if it is just livable and what they are used to and comfortable with for gasoline vehicles. That’s absolutely fine if that’s the case, but I do think it makes for an interesting distinction.
I’m not sure the thought experiment holds. First, you usually don’t have stuff (or a toddler) in your arms when you plug your phone in. Second, does your wife ask you to plug *her* phone in every night? My wife gets in her car and drives without thinking about how much fuel is in the tank. If it had to be plugged in every day or two, that’s another routine chore for me (as opposed to taking her car to fill the tank sometimes when I go run errands).
It’s not a perfect 1 to 1, but the idea is that if we were somehow in a world where the EV charging model was the norm, then something similar to the ICE vehicle refueling became an alternative, would we adopt it, would people actually find it more convenient or would they want to stick with what they were used to.
I have an EV, gas, and diesel vehicle. The EV is by far the most convenient to fuel. Plugging in is not an inconvenience nor something to worry about any more than I worry about charging my phone. It just becomes habit.
Yes, I often carry stuff into my house – do it every day. I get out of the car, plug in, pick up my stuff, walk in the house. Not an issue.
I’d have to fill up twice a week on my old efficient gas car. Yes, I drive quite a bit. For me and my use, it’s far better than a gas station. My significant other is wanting an electric vehicle for their next car for the convenience for us. It’s better than waiting in a Costco gas line or having to plan when to go to avoid said line. It’s 50 cents a gallon cheaper and Top Tier. Plus the ick factor of having to touch that nozzle previously touched by people who picked their nose or went #2 without washing their hands. No thanks.
I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but how do you expect a for-profit company to react when a market segment they’re in crashes 40% in one month?
I would expect them to look back at the 3rd quarter when they sold massively more EVs that expected (40.7% more than 2Q2025) The end of federal subsidies is an artificial stimulate that pulled ahead a lot of sales.
The same thing happened when the EU cut back subsidies at the end of 2023. Bubble in 2023, 2024 had slow sales for a few quarters, 2025 was back to growth and higher sales than that 2023 bubble.
Ford’s response is very America-centric. But then, so is nearly all of their lineup in America.
It makes me wonder if they’re intending to, as GM did, retract from markets outside of America.
They won’t retract, they’ll be pushed back. Most likely by the Chinese manufacturers. Eventually their fort in America will collapse too, but until then, keep goosing the numbers for the short term.
I think I half agree. I’m noticing a lot of charging stations going in at locations I frequent, and I’m increasingly seeing them in places I road trip as well. Five years ago or so I seriously looked at buying an EV and rejected it because the infrastructure just wasn’t there for the way I use my car. Today I look around and think, “Maybe”. I’m not totally sold on replacing my hybrid with an EV, but I’m also not rejecting it out of hand either. It’s entirely possible that by the next EV product cycle I’ll be all-in on EVs, and Ford will have nothing for me because they pivoted away from it today.
Where I think Ford is absolutely, undeniably right is the EREV Lightning. EREVs were and still are the obvious choice for trucks that need to be able to tow. No, I don’t care if they actually get used to tow. People won’t buy them if they can’t, as evidenced by the EV truck market of today.
Not only that, they’re going to be the obvious choice for a long time to come. While I said above that the EV charging infra is dramatically improved over a few years ago, that does not include towing-compatible charging stations, which I’m still not sure I’ve ever seen in the wild. I’m still a hard no on replacing my truck with an EV, but I fully intend that my next truck will be electrified. And if Ford can sell a significant number of EREVs (which it never did with the EV version) that’s a much bigger environmental win than selling a boatload of ICE trucks and a miniscule number of EV ones in the interest of passing some stupid EV purity test.
As a fellow hybrid owner I agree on all points. I am seeing more charging infrastucture being built on recent road trips, add in the Tesla network no longer being blocked to other brands.
But EVs cause autism and kill whales and are reducing the fertility in white people and are a Jewish plot to subjugate our children to heinous sexual abuse…
And, as Dear Leader said, “they’re all computer”.
>That means customers can access their favorite music, audiobook, podcast, and news apps — including Apple Music — at no additional connectivity cost for eight years with their vehicle purchase.
Well that sucks, even more so for used vehicle buyers.
After 8 years, for sure there will be jailbreaks or alternatives that are far superior to their OS.
Yeah this whole thing is asinine.
Sorry GM, I already pay damn good money to access the internet and stream media on the go from my smart phone. That’s not going to change any time soon.
They’re out of their mind if they think consumers are going to pay for a separate connectivity plan to access the same content in their car, when they could just mirror the phone in another vehicle.
It’s the biggest reason I didn’t get into an Equinox EV. I wanted one. I had even decided I would pay extra for the smurf color (blue with white roof). I probably wouldn’t have been directly affected by the connectivity plan charge, since I would have leased and likely not bought it out, assuming depreciation like other EVs. But I don’t like the way they are doing that, so I ended up in a RAV4 Prime. I’d still like to go full EV, but I am gonna stick with PHEV for a few more years.
Not much different than today. I bought my 2017 Bolt just as the original subscription to connected services ended at 5 years. For this they are doing an extra 3 which covers the vast majority of new car buyers
(2/3rds of new car buyers keep their car for 5 years or less)
I wanted a Toyota TJ Cruiser. No, not FJ. TJ.
I’m not sure if anyone remembers this concept other than me.
Good find on Phil Cordell.
My favorite car that never was is the 1977 AMC AM Van. This is a coulda, shoulda that if built woulda changed the trajectory of the company.
Ford formerly built several hybrid models, then promptly abandoned anything it learned in the process when it pivoted away from them a decade ago. Now it is relearning hybrids (er, EREVs) again.
Now Ford is abandoning the EV market, so when it needs an EV, it will have to relearn again.
Toyota has continually made hybrids since the halcyon days of the late 1990s, when oil was $12/bbl. It has scaled up those ambitions to pretty much every model in its lineup continually over the past few decades, consistently refining the tech, even when conventional thinking said that hybrids were either not worth the investment when oil was cheap or when EV mania declared that hybrids were stupid.
Toyota is also is exploring the EV space and likely will produce an EV of some sort for the foreseeable future, and as it continues to learn and expand in a sane manner, it will have well-developed products to offer their conservative clientele.
Toyota stock trades for $215/share on the NYSE. Ford trades for $14. There are reasons for this.
I’m with you on all of that except the stock price thing — because of splits, outright price is meaningless except in rare cases of the threat of de-listing (for too low a price).
Similarly, some companies (that don’t rhyme with Herkshire Bathaway) will split simply to make their share price more accessible to retail investors. It’s all window dressing either way.
But….your message stands, at least over the long run. Toyota’s market cap has grown over 150% in the past quarter century, while Ford has gone down 20-30% over the same period.
From a current investment POV, I still like Ford and it’s been one of my best performers over the past year, especially including their generous dividend.
Actually share price is a bad indicator of the value / competence of the company, Price/Earnings ratio for the stock is somewhat better, and this morning Ford is somewhat outperforming this metric (at least with respect to trailing P/E) Ford is at 11.7, and Toyota 9.6.
Downright tame compared to so many of the tech stocks 🙂
I initially got into F stock about a year ago, partly because their dividend payout was north of 5%. The capital appreciation has just been icing on the cake. Of all the car stocks I’ve owned in the past 25 years, this one has been the best by a hefty margin (so far…). And I wasn’t throwing darts, I genuinely believe that Ford finally has a little more long-term perspective — more like Toyota. Finally…
Ford isn’t abandoning the EV market, they’re abandoning the expensive-ass Large EV market.
If their new platform gets priced in around 30k like they’re claiming, they’ll sell bulk affordable EVs.
Ford still has hybrids…