Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Ford claims supply chain issues are preventing them from satisfying strong market demand for electric vehicles.
Ford Reports Devastating Losses Thanks to Electric Vehicle Gamble
by Star News Staff | May 3, 2022
by Thomas CatenacciMajor U.S. automaker Ford blamed its sizable investment in electric vehicle (EV) company Rivian for its dramatic revenue decline in the first quarter of 2022.
Ford reported revenue of $34.5 billion between January and March, a 5% decline relative to the same period in 2021, and a net loss of $3.1 billion, according to the company’s earnings report released Wednesday. The Detroit automaker said its large investment in Rivian accounted for $5.4 billion in losses during the first quarter.
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Rivian has posted massive profit losses of its own and its share price has plummeted nearly 70% over the last six months. The value of Ford’s roughly 102 million Rivian shares has fallen from about $17.5 billion to $3.2 billion since November.
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However, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe recently suggested that the supply chain for EV batteries is still far behind where it needs to be to achieve many of the goals pushed by Western governments, the WSJ reported.
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Read more: https://thestarnewsnetwork.com/2022/05/03/ford-reports-devastating-losses-thanks-to-electric-vehicle-gamble/
The official Ford Statement on their financial loss is available here.
Let us hope US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has fully completed his maternity leave, so he can fix those Rivian EV battery supply chain issues.
Of course, Buttigieg might need to magic up a whole lot more Lithium, but I’m sure Buttigieg and Biden have a plan for solving the Lithium shortage, right?
Correction (EW): Corrected the first paragraph, an older draft was accidentally published which incorrectly indicated the problem was low demand for EVs.
The CEO of General Motors has also stated they are going full electric. I think there my be some rethink on this in the future.
Especially as the shareholders watch their stock values plummet!
Nice trick there, ignoring the elephant in the room, or as they say in the news media, you “buried the lede”, which is:
1) Ford EVs, not this subsidiary, are massively popular, such that Ford has had to stop taking new orders for its Mustang Mach E, and such that Ford now plans to triple its production of that vehicle. Similarly, extreme demand for the F-150 Lightning EV is so high Ford has committed to doubling its production to 150 thousand units a year, with 200 thousand paid reservations in hand today.
2) ALL automakers are extremely strapped with COVID-induced supply chain restrictions.
3) All manufacturers of virtually everything are extremely strapped with COVID induced supply chain restrictions.
HELOOOO OUT THERE! Are you a robot and simply unaware of life in 2022?
SMH .. you guys just slay me with your stupid anti-EV propaganda. EVs are the vehicles of the future – within 20 years nobody will be making mass produced IC cars and light trucks .. better get used to it, and it has little to do with warmunism .. an EV is simply practical and clean and easy to maintain. And there are various versions of EVs that will be part of the market besides the plug-in EV … including FCVs and hybrids.
HELOOOO OUT THERE! Are you a robot and simply unaware of life in 2022?
Duane
That’s a nice conjuring trick – pretend that supply issues for e-vehicles are only covid related.
Nice try, nice lie, but we know the truth which is that lithium, nickel, palladium etc. are already running out with prices skyrocketing, and the great electrification is only just beginning. Supposedly.
https://fortune.com/2022/04/22/lithium-expert-says-supply-is-not-enough-to-keep-up-with-demand/amp/
What Khmer Vert governments such as the U.K. have mandated – an end to ICE vehicles within a decade or so – is a simple physical impossibility. This is NOT market choice but government-mandated fiat. An they know it to be impossible, it’s not a bug but a feature. Feudalism. Motorised transport only for the wealthy elite.
I guess you could always ask Russia nicely for some nickel and palladium. Or China for lithium or cobalt. You see, to its credit the American administration has had the foresight in the last few decades to cultivate good relations with countries that supply strategically important minerals, such as Russia and China. Why – things are now so friendly that Americans are going on hunting safari holidays in Ukraine.
Meds? Either a change of said Rx or ? Reality is that there is just so much of the basic components available to make EVs. Lithium for the batteries comes to mind. Doubtful your predictions will gain much traction in the real world. Ain’t gonna happen.
In a good year Ford will sell almost 1,000,000 pickups. That has fallen off due to the covid recession in the past couple of years.
So Ford is going to boost EV pickups to be about 15% of its total fleet? How long will it take for ICE pickups to be replaced by EV’s at that rate (hint: NEVER)!
Here duane let me help you with currently Australia’s cheapest EV vs ICE comparo-
How long before an electric car starts paying off? 2022 MG ZS EV vs ZS petrol running costs compared – Car News | CarsGuide
However, it will take a full 16 years for the price difference to be made up, so it will come down to how long you plan on keeping your car.
Now bear in mind nearly 9 out of 10 buyers have to pay at least 5% interest on a car loan at present and you work that cost out annually on the price difference. Yeah I know the Gummint will print the money for them so they can all drive EVs. How’s that working out at present when they printed money for everyone to sit on their ass through Covid? OTOH the nice Gummint could take a share in all their EVs so nobody misses out-
Labor announces ‘shared-equity’ scheme for homebuyers ahead of Federal Election – ABC News
We’re not children living off mummy and daddy here sonny.
EVs are the vehicles of the future . . . and always will be.
There is not enough electricity available to run business, industry and households and charge all electric fleets as well.
No problem you say, just install solar and batteries and everything will be fine.
Until you stop and realize that you are charging batteries to charge batteries. Which is ridiculous. I want quick, reliable motion, not to become my own redundant power company.
This is the fundamental problem. The policy consists of inconsistent elements.
One, moving the grid to wind and solar. But there is no solution to intermittency, and this means a huge project of wind farm building, so it will not be done in any reasonable time, so this means reducing demand.
As we have seen in the latest UK proposals to use smart meters to turn off EV charging and heat pump use when demand is too high.
Two is at the same time doubling demand by moving everyone to EVs and heat pumps. Where, again, there are not enough batteries for us all to move to EVs and there are not enough heat pumps or installers to put in the heat pumps, and even if there were, the houses in the UK are not sufficiently insulated to use them properly.
So what will happen if this craziness is really tried? I don’t know. But its clear what the choices are.
Either you commit to a reliable grid with about double present capacity, in which case you can move to heat pumps and EVs, with quite a lot of upheaval, but its at least possible, if hugely expensive and disruptive.
If you take this fork you have to abandon wind and solar, other than as ornamental add-ons to a basically conventional and nuclear grid.
Or you could go ahead with the power generation project, in which case you will have to allow ICE vehicles and gas and oil fired heating.
If you pursue both aims regardless, you will end up with a grid which cannot support the heat pumps and the EVs, and will have made other power sources, such as gas or oil, unlawful. The result of this will be a sharp reduction in the number of cars, and lots of homes without heat.
There is simply no way around this, but just because its idiotic does not mean it will not be tried. Anyone living in the UK should make sure they buy a new ICE car in 2028 or so, and drive it into the ground. It should last about 15 years, which is time for sanity to return.
They should also replace their oil fired boiler, if they live in the country, in 2023 or 2024. Yes, that’s about a year or two away! Do your best to find an installer who will supply one that is not condensing, and it should last 15 or more years, which again is time for sanity to return.
If you have a gas boiler, which most of the UK does, you are in better shape. It will probably be possible to replace it with like for like for another 15 years.
And finally, if you live in the country, start looking at generators. Because the era of reliable power, if the government really does go ahead with this, is over.
Ford seems to be searching for a strategy in general, not just EVs.
In a Feb 24 statement:
But in a March 2 article it was reported:
That’s a rather quick turnaround from “no plans”.
I saw another article which I cannot now find to the effect that Ford was laying engineers off in the electric vehicle division. This seems inconsistent with the claim that supply shortages rather than customer demand are the problem.
Next up are bailouts from your wallet.
I wonder what the auto union is saying about this. This can’t bode well for their members.
Nobody mentioned the fact that an automaker can either have an increasing percentage of its fleet be emission free or pay a penalty or offset to a company like Tesla. Half of Tesla’s profit came from these credits. Between the two choices, it might make some sense to lose money building a niche product rather than lose money signing a cheque over to Tesla.
So there is an incentive to produce some electric vehicles depending on how draconian the rules are in various regions.
Outside of government mandates, there is a niche market as evidenced by Ford having a 200,000 paid backlog on its new electric F150. Regardless of whether its a good truck or bad, that’s not insignificant. I’ve needed trucks to work in -40 off the electrical grid towing large loads so electric is a non starter. Similar story for many Canadian working trucks but there are obviously hundreds of thousands of truck users that don’t need the independence and flexibility of ICE.
Real men don’t drive EV pickups…
“Rivian has posted massive profit losses of its own…”
What is a profit loss? Particularly in the case of Rivian where it has never posted a profit. unless you consider mining investor cash as “profit” Bernie Madoff-style.
“However, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe recently suggested that the supply chain for EV batteries is still far behind where it needs to be to achieve many of the goals pushed by Western governments, the WSJ reported.”
It’s govenment quota’s they are shooting for, not market demand in a free market. Rivian let the cat out of the bag right there.
Ford is in clutches of miseducated, woke, young, executives instead of real car guys like so many companies. Back in the 50’s they hired a group out of Harvard called the Wizz Kids. Ford started advertizing “safety” while GM kept advertizing speed and style. It took Lee Iacoca and the Mustang to rescue the company.
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Vote as directed in November and get a student debt waiver and a bonus if you buy a union-made EV on new credit. Need a new mortgage also? And can you claim climate change impact in your low-income neighborhood or incentivized minority business? Just vote responsibly and remember the rules of the game–potato heads.
Get woke, go broke.
Yeah, one of those Rivian p/u trucks passed me yesterday on I-64: being hauled by a tilt-back wrecker!! Never heard of them before yesterday…
The captains of industry.
Live by the battery, die by the battery.
Batteries are getting cheaper. So why aren’t electric vehicles? | Canada’s National Observer: News & Analysis
It’s quite true the price of lithium batteries came down per kW with technical development and production economies of scale (battery gigafactories) but now they’ve hit battery resource constraints and rising prices even as EVs try to satisfy the lux end of the market. Sure ICE prices are rising but EV prices even more so with their expensive batteries. There’s nowhere for EVs to go now to satisfy the wet dream of EVs for the masses and the notion that taxpayers can bankroll that is an infantile fallacy of composition mindset.
Just a tip for the EV wet dreamers. If EVs are too expensive for all the green devotees convinced about changing the weather then perhaps allow them to dispense with all the personal safety Regs and drive cheap third world EVs. You know… tradeoff their own personal safety for the sake of the grandkiddies.
The rush to EVs is shaping up to be the typical expensive debacle that comes when ideology seeks to push society where it has not decided to go. All the major players in the EV push seem to be forgetting to consult those who actually buy cars with their own money. I for one want a lot more discussion about the cost and timeline for the 3x upsizing the entire electric grid will require so all these Unicorn EVs can be charged when the owner needs a charge as compared to when the utility wants to allow it. What is the total cost of trashing 200+ million cars and replacing them with EVs? Where will all the copper, cobalt, lithium and other minerals come from? I think too many EV advocates don’t want to have these discussions because they already know the bad news.