re: Ford writes off $19.5 Billion in EV investments. F-150 Lightning to be discontinued. OUCH!

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No one really wants EVs outside of a Tesla

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I think Tesla is just so far ahead of everyone else that companies are just giving up on catching up. I jumped in tesla this morning and asked grok to navigate me to the nearest walmart and give me the ingredients for making egg nog. The fully supervised driving is amazing and now that it is being integrated with Grok it is even better.

A friend and I called this years ago.

Upper management must be complete dumbasses

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No one really wants EVs outside of a Tesla

Hybrids >>>>>>> fully EV

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No one wants to buy an EV truck. Cars they are ok with.

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bought an electric Mustang and loves it.

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Love an EV that welds itself shut at the battery contractors when charging.

They could have saved themselves billions and billions. All they had to do was ask me if EV was going to be profitable.

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EVs are more practical than gas vehicles for 90% of drivers. Unless you’re regularly driving long distances or carrying heavy loads a small EV sedan is more than enough.

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This is a very bad stat

About half of people have no access to charge an EV where they live; meaning they have to "fill up" at an EV charging facility somewhere

There is nothing practical for any of them to wait 25-35-45 minutes to get an EV to charge from 20 to 80% at a "fast" charging station vs. filling a gas car up in less than 5 minutes. This is the biggest downfall of EVs outside of the long term ownership cost being significantly higher once it needs a new battery pack which most people cant or dont want to "afford".

Things they still need to get fixed with EVs:

- Long term ownership cost of battery replacement making car a throw away at that point
- Severe by comparison to ICE vehicles depreciation (fast moving segment, cars become obsolete quickly, they become worthless compared to what was paid for them)
- Charging time taking 25-45 minutes at "fast" charging stations (China has this mostly figured out)
- Costing WAY more than the equivalent ICE vehicle, especially with tax credit gone

The gubment spent billions retooling factories for them.

This is what happens when you build a product demanded by clueless regulators and not demanded by the people who actually buy your products.

And not to criticize Ford here....they spent $19.5 billion making EV's that were not even class competitive in the EV space. And that's production capacity and capital that could have potentially gone to developing new product that people actually want. That cash could have gone into the next generation Taurus sedan or the Ford Edge replacement that never came. It could have gone to making a little more effort into the redesign of the aging but profitable Ford Expedition or rebuilding nearly dead Lincoln brand or to maintain their affordable hybrid cars (Focus, Fusion) on the market to compete with the wildly popular Honda Civic and Toyota Camry hybrid.

General Motors had much better EV's than Ford, but they also burned through an astounding amount of resources developing this tech that's reliant on an energy grid we don't have and raw materials that are hard to get. General Motors elected to delay development of their new full sized van replacement and kill off their profitable full sized sedans to invest in the "Factory Zero" EV plant, which has only produced about 5,000 cars the whole year. The only thing GM has done right with EV's is building a line of competitive electric Cadillacs, which are higher end products sold in major metros with no real expectation of being volume sellers anyway. The EV Cadillacs just happened to exist when former Tesla owners decided they don't like Elon Musk anymore for political reasons. Cadillac got lucky. That brand will probably keep GM's EV business on life support.

I won't even get started on Hyundai, who threw cash into EVs instead of investing in an ICE pickup truck for the US and Canadian market. That is a massive missed opportunity for them. The Ionic products are legitimately good vehicles, but they are not popular sellers. The Ionic5 is a rental fleet queen, and the Ionic6 is struggling to sell at all with the lack of tax credits. In the last 5 years, Hyundai probably could have sold 10x as many gas powered pickup trucks.....if they had developed them instead of EVs.

And Stellantis? Clueless across the board - the only thing keeping this entire global company afloat are gas powered Ram and Jeep Wrangler sales in North America. Not only did they ruin the Charger and kill off the popular 300 sedan and Challenger muscle car.....but they also ruined the next generation mid sized Jeep by making it an EV only vehicle (Jeep Recon). And they did this AFTER the EV tax credit has expired, so they are not only wrong....but they are also late. In the process, they had to introduce a risky new line of full sized SUVs (Grand Wagoneer) on a shoestring budget that resulted in those SUVs ultimately failing in the marketplace. They still have no replacement for the aging and popular Durango SUV either because they have shoveled cash into poorly executed EVs that nobody wants.

Nissan would have been better off never building the Ariya EV and instead allocating those resources towards redesigning their full sized pickup truck, the Titan. Instead they canceled the Titan, and they have nothing to offer at a time when Toyota is absolutely fumbling the full sized truck segment with widespread engine reliability issues and safety defects. This could be Nissan's opportunity to reinvent itself and repair their horrible reputation by offering a reliable alternative to the Tundra pickup.....but instead they have a huge inventory of EV's that nobody wants, taking space by a neglected ICE lineup like the Altima. They should have made the Xterra, not the Ariya.

Mercedes Benz "EQ" lineup is total shite. These are some of the fastest, most painfully depreciating cars sold today. The quality and design are not on par with Mercedes-Benz products, and they consumed capital that could have been spent redesigning the iconic and highly profitable ICE Mercedes roadsters and convertibles. The existence of these EQ mistakes are a drain on the Mercedes brand.

They all went in too hard, too fast on EVs that the people who actually buy cars don't want. This was pushed by people in government that clearly do not understand our power grid or the complexities of our raw material sourcing created by our burdensome environmental laws.

EV's will sell on their own merit eventually. Let their popularity grow over time organically.

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how do EV drivers deal with sitting in traffic on the interstate for hours.

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They're fine in traffic. There's no engine to idle.