Ford sidelines all-electric SUV in blow to Harris EV push

FPI / August 27, 2024

Ford announced last week that it is backing away from manufacturing an all-electric, three-row SUV and will instead produce hybrid vehicles for its next rollout of three-row SUVs.

Earlier this year, data found that electric vehicles significantly stifiled Ford’s profit margin. Ford Model e, the company’s EV division, had a net loss of $4.7 billion last year – with $1.6 billion of that in the last quarter – and Ford's chief financial officer John Lawler explained during the company’s earnings call in February that both "the quarter and year were impacted by challenging market dynamics and investments in next-generation vehicles."

In a conference call with media on Aug. 21, Lawler said: "Our focus here is to remake Ford into a higher-growth, higher-margin, more capital-efficient and durable business, and that means these vehicles need to be profitable. And if they're not profitable, based on where the customer is in the market, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions."

The announcement is a major blow to Kamala Harris' EV initiative, which she has promoted heavily over the last three and a half years.

"It is abundantly clear that the federal government’s push to ram electric vehicles down everyone’s throat was unwanted and unworkable. The mandates forced on Americans under Biden-Harris will dismantle what remains of Michigan’s industrial base, destroy American jobs, and make us more dependent on Communist China," Republican Michigan congressional candidate Tom Barrett told Fox News Digital in reaction to Dearborn-based Ford’s move last week. "In Congress, I will continue my fight to protect the rights of consumers to purchase the vehicle that meet their needs and their family’s budget, not the social engineering agenda of bureaucrats in Washington."

Harris was one of the original co-signers of New York socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal.

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In December 2021, Harris was tasked with helping to lead the "Electric Vehicle Charging Action Plan" to ensure 50% of car sales were electric vehicles by 2030. The Biden-Harris administration further cracked down on the plan this year with one of the most significant climate regulations in U.S. history – it would force half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 to be electric.

The $7.5 billion federal program, which was part of 2021’s infrastructure bill, aimed to install half a million EV charging stations across the nation, but has only produced as many as eight federal charging stations as of May of this year.

Auto industry leaders said the Biden-Harris push for EVs was rolled out too quickly and will likely fail.

"The problem with the whole EV movement is that there was a colossal amount of hype behind it, largely from what I like to call the liberal mainstream media, making it sound like everybody's next vehicle was going to be an EV," former Ford, Chrysler and General Motors executive Bob Lutz told Fox Digital in April. "And of course, the government was pushing it, because of their climate change policies. And it just plain wasn't going to happen."

"And yes, it did come too soon and too fast," he added.

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