Ford cancels EV battery orders
This is pretty sad to hear, but it does make sense. I mean, for Ford, what can they do? Their only alternative would be to just, I don’t know, become a different car company, maybe.
But yeah, Kodak, when they went bankrupt, they didn’t want to be Kodak anymore, but they had no choice.
Reevaluation of Battery Orders
Ford have, unfortunately, just revealed that they have canceled some of their battery orders, not because, by the way, of a lack of demand.
Now, apparently in the UK, a lot of people have been trying to buy Ford vehicles, Ford EVs, but Ford don’t want to sell them.
They are actually putting less stock on the market because they’re losing too much money. This actually does make sense.
Challenges in EV Market Penetration
Ford has reduced its EV battery orders as they’re facing massive losses on their EVs, scaling back their electrification plans.
Now, Ford’s saying, there’s big slowdown there’s not enough demand. Well, if you look at Ford’s EV orders over the last three months, what are they? I think they’ve doubled. Doubled? They’ve doubled their orders. I think that’s correct.
I don’t think that’s really true. I think it’s just that people don’t want to pay more than internal combustion.
I don’t agree with that because it’s so much cheaper to run an EV and they last for so long.
The battery packs now are lasting for just longer than the life of the car. You could use the car and then just use this big battery for energy storage or do whatever you want, recycle it.
They’re worth $10,000 US dollars. The battery packs themselves recycled per ton, that is.
Battery Weight
An average battery pack might weigh about 600 kilos or about 1,200, 1,300 pounds. The battery packs, even recycled, are worth a lot of money.
But My point is this, it’s so much cheaper to run an EV. The savings are massive, so it’s worth paying a little bit more to get one.
That said, I understand why some people who are new to the technology are scared of it. They want to get a price that’s lower, really.
If you get an EV for the same price as internal combustion and your running costs are way lower, then I think a lot of people incentivize by that.
But Ford, they don’t really want to do that because they’re losing so much money. I reported that Ford lost $23,000 on every EV it sold in the first quarter of this year.
A lot of people think, Well, that’s development costs, so R&D costs. But the only thing is, Ford have been around for years.
They’ve been making EVs now for years. How long do you just cop those development costs? I mean, BYD, they’re growing their EV sector.
They’re investing billions into engineering and everything else, but they’re not losing money on every car they sell.
So there’s not really any major excuse that Ford have to be losing $120,000 on every EV, even if you include development costs.
I don’t think that makes a lot of sense, especially considering they’ve slowed down their actual development spend.
So Ford are saying they have, well, apparently Insiders are saying that Ford has reduced its orders for batteries.
They have partnerships with SK on LG Energy Solutions and Contemporary Amperex technology, so CATL.
Ford is forecasting EV unit losses of around $5.5 billion this year, and that’s a lot of money.
Ford CEO, Jim Filing, said this, Model E is the main drag on the whole company right now.
For those people who just blathered on saying, Legacy car manufacturers, they’re going to make a profit on EVs it’s easy to do.
As soon as they wake up and take it seriously, they’ve got 100 years of manufacturing behind them.
They all know it they can make cars better than whoever, Tesla, or a BMW, or whoever else.
When is this going to happen exactly? I mean, in all seriousness, when exactly are they going to do it.
At this time of writing, we don’t know how much Ford have scaled back their EV orders, but the reductions have come as the company is trying.
While it’s reducing its investment into EVs, it’s saying it’s pausing them because it’s losing so much money.
It’s postponing a $12 billion EV investment, which would have brought down the cost of its cars if it had spent that and would have helped it to survive into the future.
But anyway, Ford’s more concerned about today rather tomorrow. Ford announced plans in April to delay the launch of a three-row or seven-set electric EV, which I think would be super popular, as well as a next-generation electric pickup truck, which is exactly what they need.
Pause in F150 Lightning Shipments
They need a next generation Ford F150 Lightning to compete with the new GM Silverado EV, which has 350 kilowatt charging, 460 miles of range. It’s a much better product than Ford’s F150 Lightning.
Yeah, it’s more expensive, but it’s much, much better that’s what Ford need. That vehicle would, I think, revolutionize the trucking industry, pickup trucks in America.
the company has paused all shipments of the F150 Lightning. They did this in February to focus on gasoline-powered vehicles and to stop the bleeding.
Now, they have restarted orders, but like I said, all of this stuff, it’s disappointing from Ford.