THE MORNING RANT: After $32B in Losses, Ford Throws in the Towel on EVs – There Will Not Be a Full-Size Electric Pickup Truck

Ford Motor Company has announced that it is de-transitioning from the “EV Transition.” Specifically, Ford has finally given up on the eco-globalist dream of an all-EV future, and the company will no longer try to cram recalcitrant consumers into electric vehicles.

“Ford Writes Down $19.5 billion As It Pivots Electric Lightning Line of Vehicles” [Fortune – 12/15/2025]

This is a huge victory for liberty-loving Americans. Left-wing zealots had specifically targeted gasoline-powered vehicles in their battle against carbon-fueled freedom. The rejection of EVs by American consumers was a populist political statement, and Ford executives found themselves in the position of having to either remain loyal to the enviro-communists in Davos, which would have killed off the company, or finally accept that consumers will not acquiesce to an unelected green dictatorship.

More specifically, Ford has finally acknowledged that there is just not a market for an all-electric pickup truck. Not only has the Ford F150 Conflagration Lightning been canceled, but Ford will not even attempt to produce another full-size electric pickup. Of note, the gas/diesel F150 is America’s best-selling vehicle.

Ford CEO Jim Farley is quoted as saying, “Instead of plowing billions into the future knowing these large EVs will never make money, we are pivoting.”

Mr. Farley’s catastrophic EV misadventure has now cost Ford over $32 billion in losses. Ford had already lost $13 billion over the past four years on its “Model E” program (or “Model E-dsel” as some have joked), and the company is now about to realize another $19 billion loss in unwinding the EV mess.

To put the magnitude of Ford’s $32 billion EV loss into context, Ford’s total profit over the past seven years was about $31 billion. Some back-of-the-envelope math shows me that Ford will have lost almost $100,000 for every EV it has ever sold.

Some people are arguing that Ford was just a victim of Obama/Biden era mandates, but Toyota and Honda deftly navigated through those years without committing to an all-EV future in the manner that Ford and General Motors did.

To be fair to Mr. Farley, he answers to a weak Board of Directors which is apparently obedient to the Ford family. Meanwhile, the Ford family retains a powerful voting share of the company’s stock. Bill Ford has maneuvered himself into a powerful position within the Ford family voting bloc and on the Board. Mr. Ford is also a hard-left environmentalist who for decades has been trying to make Ford into a green company that would impress his communist friends in Davos. Jim Farley’s commitment to EVs was almost certainly at the direction of Bill Ford.

I can only surmise what is going on within the Ford family as Bill Ford and Jim Farley drove the company into a $32 billion ditch, but I am guessing that some family members have finally said “enough.”

Despite the great news about Ford terminating any future all-electric F150, there are clearly some “green” bones being thrown to Bill Ford. The company is promising at some future date to release an extended range “EREV” pickup that will have a gasoline-powered generator alongside an electric drivetrain. That sounds just as preposterous as the concept behind plug-in hybrids.

Ford has also announced that it is getting into the industrial-scale battery electric storage systems business, also knowns as “BESS.” Let me be the first to confidently predict that there will be a multi-billion-dollar write-off for Ford’s BESS distraction in coming years.

“Ford to convert EV battery plants to make battery storage for data centers” [Elektrek – 12/15/2025]

Ford is jumping into the battery energy storage business, betting that booming demand from data centers and the electric grid can absorb the EV battery capacity it says it’s not using. To achieve this, Ford plans to repurpose its existing EV battery manufacturing capacity in Glendale, Kentucky, into a dedicated hub for manufacturing battery energy storage systems. Ford says it will invest about $2 billion over the next two years to scale the new business.

Ford getting involved in battery storage systems makes as much sense as when Exxon decided to manufacture and sell office machinery. But I understand in part why Ford is doing this. Specifically, without the BESS announcement, Ford would have to own up to another multi-billion-dollar write-off for the zombie Kentucky battery plant. Plus, with this BESS project, Bill Ford can still feel proud that the company is engaging in a form of green, save-the-world posturing.

For those of us Tennessee taxpayers who kicked in almost a billion dollars toward Ford’s new electric truck plant (“Blue Oval City”), there may be some good news. Concurrent with these other major changes in direction, Ford has announced that the never-used, Memphis-area plant will be repurposed toward the manufacture of gasoline powered pickup trucks - but not until 2029. That would be great, but again, I fear that this is really just a stalling tactic to avoid yet another multi-billion dollar write-off. So long as Ford keeps promising production out of that plant at some date in the far-away future, the state of Tennessee can’t claw back the bad investment it made, and Ford keeps the massive loss off of its books – at least for a few more years.

Even though Ford still has a long way to go to fully extricate itself from its negligent EV commitment, killing off its flagship EV and promising that there will never be an all-electric full-size pickup truck is a monumental milestone.

An article I wrote titled “Banks Are Racially Profiling Mortgage Applicants — The Government Requires It” has been published by The American Spectator.

As crazy as it sounds, if a mortgage applicant won’t disclose his race and ethnicity, the banker is required to visually profile the customer and report that customer’s racial appearance to the government. Bank of America was fined by the Commercial Financial Protection Bureau and some of its bankers were disciplined because they chose not to engage government-mandated racial profiling.

I’d be honored if you’d give it a read. (This article is not blocked by a paywall.)

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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