How to lose billions on EVs
Senator Everett Dirksen said: “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Our federal government has been talking trillions for some time now, but the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration’s (MMPA) push for electric vehicles has EV manufacturers talking, and losing, billions.
MMPA mouthpieces like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm assure us EVs are the future and they’re pushing unconstitutional, unrealizable regulations to force that future down our throats. Unfortunately for them, economic reality is intruding, and Ford provides a disturbing example:
Graphic: X screenshot.
The recent figures are part of a trend of loss for Ford, with their Model e reporting a full-year EBIT loss of $4.7 billion on the sale of 116,000 units. This is an average loss of $40,525 per vehicle — and even that is just a third of the per-vehicle loss seen in the first three months of 2024.
Ford announced months ago it was cutting EV production in half. It took them well over a year, and a $4.7 billion dollar loss—I suspect it’s more—to finally, barely, acknowledge their fiscal responsibilities to their shareholders. What company can afford to sustain those kinds of losses, regardless of their fealty to the MMPA and it’s socialist/communist policies? It would now seem likely Ford is going to have to do more than halve their EV production:
Ford announced earlier this month [April] that the company will delay producing two new electric models, opting for hybrid vehicles instead.
The old aphorism “what can’t go on won’t go on” applies. Ford has possibly, belatedly, realized EVs aren’t going to be the future. As the average EV costs more than $60,000, they’re too expensive for most Americans. The wealthy who buy EVs as greenie street cred have already bought all they want, depleting the market, and the EV charging doom loop is eternal. Without a massive charging network across the country, widespread EV ownership is impossible. But without widespread EV ownership there’s no reason, financial or practical, to build chargers. Neither EVs nor chargers are profitable without huge government subsidies, in effect, forcing people who don’t want and can’t afford EVs to subsidize them for the virtue-signaling wealthy.
Driving the doom loop are wind and solar mandates, which include forcing the closure of reliable coal and natural gas electric generation plants, with no plans to replace them with anything reliable. We don’t have enough generation capacity now, and should the public be forced into EVs, that problem will dramatically, immediately worsen, forcing rolling blackouts across America.
Even better, there aren’t enough rare earths and other necessary materials anywhere on the planet, and most of those that do exist are controlled by China, or China dominates processing. And of course, the MMPA won’t let Americans mine or process those materials in America. They’re also preparing to allow China to flood the American market with cheap, Chinese government-subsidized EVs, the better to force Americans to buy them, and the better to eliminate the American automobile industry, which is finally recognizing economic reality and fiduciary responsibility.
The MMPA allocated billions for building EV chargers, but in a stunning display of federal government know how and efficiency, have, in a few years, built only a handful, and only on the East coast.
But let’s return to Ford and see how 2024 is shaping up:
Ford Motor Company reported a whopping $132,000 loss on each electric vehicle (EV) sold during the first three months of 2024, amassing a $1.3 billion loss.
That’s far more than the MSRP for those vehicles, and much, much more than Ford’s production costs.
The revenue for Ford’s EV car, the Model e, plunged by 84 percent to about $100 million, which the company blamed on EV price cuts across the auto industry.
“That resulted in the $1.3 billion loss before interest and taxes (EBIT), and the massive per-vehicle loss in the Model e unit,” the publication noted.
Adding to the doom loop is customer’s realization that when Ford no longer produces any EV models, such as the electric Mustang or the electric F-150, parts supplies are going to dry up, and resale value will quickly drop into negative numbers. There will be no used EV market. Unfortunate EV owners will have to pay people to take their worthless EVs off their hands.
But other than all that, sure. EVs are the future—in some other, self-imagined elite constructed, reality.
Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.