THE MORNING RANT: Ford Rehires Engineers, Blames AI (not Its EVs Debacle) for Having Dismissed Them in the First Place

There was some great news last week when Ford announced that it was re-hiring hundreds of engineers who were let go a few years back. Those engineers had been dismissed from their jobs for two reasons:

1) To free up cash for Ford’s ill-fated “electric vehicle transition.”

2) Ford thought it wouldn’t need them any longer. The childishly “green” great-grandson of Henry Ford, Bill Ford, along with Bill’s pet CEO, Jim Farley, didn’t think they’d need engineers whose area of expertise was gas-powered, internal combustion (“ICE” ) vehicles. In obedience to Bill Ford’s climate religion, Farley had committed the company to pursuing an all-EV future. He didn’t see the need to further develop ICE vehicles, nor to employ the engineers who could do so.

The EV transition has been a catastrophic failure, costing Ford more than $35 billion before the company finally canceled its flagship electric vehicle, the Ford F150 Conflagration Lightning.

As I documented several years ago, ”Ford is terminating valuable engineers and other personnel involved in traditional internal combustion car manufacturing, all in an effort to free up money for its cash-sucking EV boondoggle.”

Ford was unambiguous that the reason it was gutting its corps of ICE employees was to fund its EV future, as documented by Bloomberg in this piece from 2022 titled “Ford Plans Up to 8,000 Job Cuts to Help Fund EV Investment.”

The good news is that even though Bill Ford is a naïve nepot who fell under the spell of the climate doom cult, Ford’s customers and dealers are considerably smarter. Despite the massive losses Ford took trying to get consumers to take delivery of its EV offerings, there is virtually no price that could move the needle and make Ford’s EVs anything more than a low-volume gimmick. For Ford to survive, it had to turn its focus back to products that Americans will buy in mass-market volume.

It’s funny that Ford is blaming a failed reliance on artificial intelligence for the need to re-hire engineers, rather than blaming its commitment to EVs. Perhaps Farley and Ford feel that it is politically safer to blame AI than to blame their EV debacle.

“Ford Rehires Experienced Engineers after AI Misses the Mark” [NY Post – 6/29/2026]

Ford has rehired experienced human engineers to help address the shortcomings of artificial intelligence (AI) tools meant to tackle quality issues in the automaker’s production processes.

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“Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles…”

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“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high quality product…”

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[Ford’s VP of Vehicle Hardware Engineering] also noted that the AI tools lacked the training and expertise that veteran technicians have, and many of the company’s veteran technicians left Ford before their knowledge could be used to improve the performance of the AI tools.

The “EV transition” failed, and the American auto industry is now de-transitioning back to a focus on manufacturing (gasoline-powered) vehicles which Americans are willing to buy.

But for old times’ sake, here is an update on Ford’s misguided efforts to become an EV manufacturer. The sales report is out for last month (June 2026). It’s awful:

• Ford sold only 2,322 EVs, which represented just 1.3% of its total US vehicle sales.

• Those 2,322 EVs included discontinued F150 Lightnings, which Ford is practically giving away to make them go away. I’d call it a “fire sale,” but that seems a little insensitive considering the Lightning’s propensity to spontaneously erupt into flames.

• The 1,715 Mustang Mach-Es that we were sold represented a 32% decline from June 2025’s already abysmal numbers.

The next big milestone for Ford’s EV de-transition is for it to formally announce that manufacture of the Mustang Mach E is being terminated.

The many descendants of Henry Ford still hold a controlling interest in Ford stock. A Ford-family revolt against the destruction wrought by Bill Ford would also be in order.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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